NWA, mechanics union will talk today

09/08/2005

Liz Fedor and Tony Kennedy,
Star Tribune
September 8, 2005

Northwest Airlines will seek deeper pay and job cuts from the mechanics union when the two parties return to the bargaining table in the Twin Cities today—Day 20 of the strike.

The negotiations could determine the fate of about 4,400 Northwest union jobs, including more than 2,000 in the Twin Cities. The Eagan-based carrier warned the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) that it intends to start hiring permanent replacement workers beginning Tuesday.

Northwest mechanics, cleaners and custodians walked off the job Aug. 19 after AMFA negotiators rejected pay cuts of about 25 percent and the elimination of about 2,000 jobs, a deal that would have saved the airline $176 million a year. AMFA negotiators refused to send that “last, best offer” out to their members for a ratification vote.

“Unfortunately, the world has changed dramatically since March 2005, and even since August 19,” Julie Hagen Showers, Northwest’s vice president of labor relations, said in a letter to the union Tuesday.

News of the talks didn’t cheer Al Whipkey, a 26-year Northwest mechanic. The Northfield resident has no idea whether he’d approve a new, worse deal.

“I’ve found out how difficult it is to find a job, and I do believe that’s what the company wanted. But to go back to a job with half the work rules and half the wages?” he asked.

“I don’t know if I want to do that,” Whipkey concluded.

Jeff Mathews, AMFA’s contract coordinator, declined to characterize expectations for the new round of talks. He said the union was returning to the table today “to see what Northwest Airlines has to say.”

The stakes will be high. Northwest warned AMFA that its $1.1 billion cost-cutting target for its entire workforce, set in March, likely will rise because of recent large increases in the price of jet fuel.

Showers said Northwest already considers more than 800 custodian and cleaner jobs to be permanently outsourced, as well as mechanics jobs held at many non-hub cities served by Northwest.

Absent a deal, Northwest told AMFA that it will begin hiring permanent replacement workers next Tuesday.

If AMFA maintains the bargaining strategy it had in August, “They’ll go in and say, ‘We didn’t like your final offer. We like this [new] one even less,’ “ said Robert Mann, an airline consultant from New York.

Or AMFA negotiators could choose to “save as many jobs as possible” and try to get good severance packages for those jobs that will be eliminated, he said.

If AMFA negotiators continue to resist Northwest’s concessionary demands, it could be based on the belief that Northwest cannot operate over the long term with replacement mechanics, vendors and managers.

O.V. Delle-Femine, AMFA’s national director, rejected arguments by some observers that AMFA’s leverage has eroded since the strike began.

“The company is starting to see that these scabs are not doing the job,” he said in an interview. “The flights are not going out on time.”

AMFA officers and workers on the picket lines have said Northwest constructed a facade to disguise operational problems.

Steve MacFarlane, AMFA’s assistant national director, said this week that Northwest’s salaried workers who hold mechanic’s licenses are reaching the burnout stage. “Managers continue to be forced to work six days a week and 12- to 16-hour days, many of them living in hotel rooms away from their wives and children,” MacFarlane said.

Ray Good, a striking Northwest mechanic who moved to the Twin Cities three years ago, said any talks will be complicated by the company’s natural reluctance to admit that the strike has created problems in maintenance areas.

“The company wants to save face,” Good said. “They don’t want to admit to any problems.”

Two other striking Northwest mechanics, veterans Dennis Beumer and David Johnson, believe AMFA negotiators will go to the bargaining table with more leverage than they had when the strike began.

The airline’s data

Those views are at odds with operations data released by Northwest and flight information tracked by the Star Tribune and others, which show Northwest operations running close to normal.

Andy Roberts, Northwest’s executive vice president of operations and the architect of the strike preparation plan, said on-time performance has improved since the strike began.

Roberts acknowledged that replacement workers and managers have been working 12-hour shifts and six days a week, but he said they are coping.

“Management was all prepared, and they knew that they were going to have to suck it up and do what was necessary,” he said. Some management employees have returned to their old jobs because the replacement workers and outside vendors no longer need their help, he said.

Northwest said Wednesday that it filled 84.8 percent of its seats last month, which was up 1.5 percentage points from August 2004. That seems to indicate that passengers did not book away from the carrier in great numbers during the strike.

Delle-Femine said he doesn’t put much faith in any numbers produced by Northwest management. Instead, he and other AMFA officials and members continue to question why 470 Federal Aviation Administration inspectors’ reports were not entered into an electronic data base during the first 12 days of the strike.

Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., had raised concerns over that issue and called for a federal investigation last week. But on Wednesday, Dayton told reporters that he had spoken to the FAA’s top administrator and she assured him that Northwest is operating safely.

When the strike deadline was reached Aug. 19, Northwest was attempting to reduce the pay of top-scale mechanics from $36.14 an hour to $27.17 per hour, or from $75,171 to $56,513 a year. The new offer is expected to be lower.

Striking maintenance inspector Joe Bauer, a Northwest employee for the past 19 years, said solidarity among AMFA’s membership has only been strengthened by the strike, not weakened. If the company is counting on a significant number of mechanics to cross their own picket lines, they are mistaken, he said.

Whipley’s wife, Bernadette, an engine cleaner at Northwest, has come to terms with the fact that her job may be gone, whether or not AMFA reaches a deal with Northwest. That’s one reason why, at 60, she filed early retirement papers last week.

“I assumed all along that we’d be gone; they’ve been saying that to us long enough,” Bernadette Whipley said.

Meanwhile, 1,600 AMFA members in Minnesota have applied for unemployment assistance, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. A hearing on their applications is scheduled for Sept. 21.