8-28-05, 8:43 am
Romulus, Mich. -- On August 20th, 4,430 airline mechanics at Northwest Airlines went on strike. After several months of negotiations, it became obvious to the union that the company had no intention of budging from its initial offer and wanted to push the workers to walk out.
At the beginning of negotiations the company insisted that it needed the mechanics union (Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association) to make $176 million in concessions. The company threatened bankruptcy and demanded a 25.7 percent pay cut and the right to fire 53 percent of the mechanics in order to outsource their work to non-union subcontractors.
Since the mid-1990s, Northwest has cut almost 5,000 union mechanics from its payroll, all under threat of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Doulgas. M. Steenland, the company's CEO who has presided over the companies financial woes over the last four years, took in about $5.4 million in salary and stock options last year alone.
In addition to these demands, the company jumped the gun and began subcontracting some of the work to non-union workers last December. This violation of the existing agreement was a show of bad faith as negotiations for the new contract began. In so doing, Northwest Airlines tried to impose its demands even before a new agreement had been reached.
Northwest also tried to force the union to rush a vote on the company’s final offer, hoping that the members wouldn’t have time to analyze what the company is trying to do to them.
According to Harry S., a mechanic with 17 years at Northwest, all of these demands were meant to force the union to walk out. He says that some members might have agreed to the economic portion of the company’s offer, but when they learned that the company wanted to fire half of their membership and refused to negotiate any of these terms, the membership united and agreed to authorize a strike.
Over 92 percent of the union members voted in late July to strike.
A main point of contention for the union has been the company’s claim that it needs the union to give back $176 million in order for it to stay afloat. So far, the union estimates that in the last 18 months the company has spent $107 million to train and replace union mechanics with non-union workers and for other expenses related to busting the union.
According to a letter of support written last month by flight attendants union Vice President Jeff Gardiner, 'Management is throwing millions of dollars toward intimidating its employees when that money could be better spent for a better business plan that includes hedging fuel, paying down debt and funding pensions.'
In fact the company’s economic woes arise not simply from the economic downturn or high fuel prices, but, says AMFA President O.V. Delle-Femine, 'management is trying to exploit this economic situation to bust our union.' And instead of reinvesting its resources to account for growing fuel prices and ensuring longer-term financial stability, the company is working on breaking the union.
In order to bust the union, the company has spent the last 18 months organizing non-union subcontractors and replacement mechanics.
I talked with one replacement worker who happened to quit while I was visiting the picket line. He was roaming Metro Detroit Airport's McNamara Terminal, which houses Northwest, trying to buy a ticket to fly back home. He spoke only under condition of anonymity, so I call him Johnny J.
Johnny is from San Francisco and says he was hired by a company called Strom Aviation, which specializes in hiring aircraft technicians. The company’s website promises 'high wages and long-term assignments' available across the country because the 'aviation industry is booming.'
Johnny says that the company brought them to an aircraft 'training facility' in Tucson, Arizona where he worked on a computer training simulation for one only week. Johnny described the training as unrealistic. 'Once you were out on the floor,' he said, 'the work was different.'
Then the airline brought the replacement workers in packs of 60 to 80 'like cattle' to Detroit.
It was only there that the replacement workers found out they were being hired to cross a picket line. 'They lied to us,' Johnny says. 'We didn’t expect to take someone else’s job.'
But many of them said, 'We’re here, broke, so what the hell.'
They quickly learned, however, that the company had no intention of keeping its promises. Replacement workers were promised $1,000 bonuses, new tools, and permanent positions. When the bonus wasn't forthcoming and the tool kit was joke, Johnny quit. He said, 'I couldn’t even fix a bike with the tools they gave us.'
The replacement workers have also been tightly locked up two to a room at the nearby Hyatt-Regency Hotel. Work shifts are never consistent and security is so tight that workers are not allowed to leave the hotel except to go to work. Johnny states, 'They treated us like slaves and dumb asses.'
He says that he was also motivated to quit because he hadn’t intended to take anyone’s job.
When he left, the airline topped off his experience by driving him to the bus station and paying for a ticket home on Greyhound.
Northwest prefers poorly trained, underpaid mechanics who, as one striker said, 'don't know how to change a light bulb on the wing tip' in order to increase its profits. In fact, safety issues since the beginning of the strike have seen a tripling of Northwest’s flight cancellations and a 50 percent flight delay record.
A sore spot for the striking mechanics has been the lack of official support from other unions at the airline. Despite a letter of support from the flight attendants’ union (PFAA), a strike vote in mid-August failed to win a majority for a sympathy strike. Many flight attendants are concerned, however, as a federal judge recently threw out their lawsuit to block Northwest from training replacement flight attendants for an upcoming anticipated battle with the company.
PFAA’s leadership may issue another call to vote on a sympathy strike and have set up a strike fund to help the mechanics.
Other maintenance and grounds workers who work alongside the mechanics have refused to support the strike. In fact, the airline has agreed to give some of the mechanics’ work to other maintenance workers who are members of a machinist union local (International Association of Machinists, IAM).
Harry S. says the grounds personnel shouldn’t get used to the work, however. 'If we lose, give it six months and all of that work will be non-union and at cut rates of pay.'
The mechanics are worried about the implications of the failure of the other airline workers to support the strike. While it is true that IAM is still bitter about the mechanics’ 1997 split and subsequent decertification of several IAM locals to fill out its membership, for rank and file workers, IAM’s refusal to support the strike signals an 'everyone for themselves' era of unionism.
--Joel Wendland may be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
