Senator fighting NWA job cuts

03/20/2005

Conrad Defiebre and Liz Fedor, Star Tribune
March 19, 2005

Backed by Northwest Airlines mechanics who said the firm’s push to outsource their work compromises air safety, a charge the airline denies, Sen. Satveer Chaudhary vowed Friday to block the airline’s expansion plans at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport if it goes ahead with up to 900 job cuts in Minnesota.

“Under no circumstances should this company expect the taxpayers of Minnesota to give them a monopoly on our busiest transportation hub while cutting Minnesota jobs and hurting Minnesota families,” he said.

About 60 mechanics crowded a State Capitol news conference with the Fridley DFLer in front of signs reading, “Save jobs for safe planes.”

Several of the workers claimed the cutbacks announced Wednesday would transfer jetliner maintenance to crews lacking the FBI background checks, training and certification required of mechanics in Minnesota.

Northwest said Wednesday that it plans to take 30 planes out of service this year. When those planes are parked, Northwest said it will not have to pay to maintain them. Northwest announced that it will shut down a heavy maintenance line staffed by Northwest mechanics in the Twin Cities. It also will close two maintenance lines operated by a private vendor in Texas.

Ted Ludwig, president of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association Local 33, held up broken parts of a plane brake that he said “blew up” on an MSP taxiway because of shoddy work done elsewhere.

“We don’t know who’s maintaining these planes,” Chaudhary said.

Ludwig also released a letter he received Thursday from Julie Hagen Showers, Northwest’s vice president for labor relations, saying that his public questioning of the safety of airplanes maintained in foreign countries “may be putting your career at risk.”

The letter added: “The introduction of unfounded safety concerns to the public domain can have only one purpose and effect—to deter passenger air travel on Northwest. ... Such conduct would, therefore, subject any Northwest employee responsible for that conduct to discipline up to and including discharge.”

“Any suggestion that safety has been compromised at Northwest is false,” Northwest spokesman Thomas Becher said in a written statement Friday. “Safety of our aircraft and flight operations has always been the top priority at Northwest, and safety is never compromised. ... Northwest’s FAA-approved maintenance program applies equally to all repairs to Northwest aircraft, no matter where the work is performed. Every major air carrier in the United States engages in similar maintenance outsourcing, most to much higher degrees than Northwest.”

Becher added that job cuts announced this week are not connected with the outsourcing issue. “Outsourcing is allowed within the terms of the contract negotiated between the company and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association in 2001,” he said. The AMFA agreement permits Northwest to contract with outside vendors for up to 38 percent of its maintenance work.

Chaudhary said Northwest’s $862 million plan to expand the airport and move all competing airlines to the satellite Humphrey terminal by 2007 should get no public support under current circumstances. The Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) has the authority to decide the size and shape of the next airport expansion. The MAC and the airlines have not asked the Legislature for funding for an expansion.

“Based on this plan to cut jobs, it’s clear that Northwest has not earned the goodwill of Minnesota’s taxpayers and should not be rewarded with their money or a state-sanctioned monopoly,” Chaudhary said. “The state of Minnesota needs partners, not competing interests.”

But another Northwest spokesperson, Mary Stanik, said in a statement Friday that from the airline’s perspective, the cutbacks will have no impact on the 20/20 airport expansion plan.

“The company remains in full compliance with all of its employment covenants under its state of Minnesota/MAC financings. The agreements allow the company to reduce Minnesota employment in response to changing business conditions as long as such reductions are proportional to Northwest’s domestic systemwide employment reductions.”

Chaudhary’s bill to slap an immediate, indefinite moratorium on the expansion project will get a Senate hearing in early April.