AMFA mechanics walk the picket line at Detroit Metro Airport. Photo by: Jim West
by Tom Price
Aircraft mechanics at Northwest Airlines spent eight months bargaining with their employer and offered huge concessions to save the airline. In the end, the company would have none of it and provoked a strike.
NWA put a $176 million price tag on a union-busting scheme—the amount they hope to save by flying with a bare bones maintenance crew. To get there NWA demanded 25 percent pay cuts from 4,427 aircraft mechanics, custodians and cleaners represented by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA). NWA also demanded pension freezes, 20 percent medical co-pays, and reduced holiday and sick days. Even worse, the company demanded the right to contract-out maintenance to foreign countries and the elimination of 53 percent of the union’s jobs.
AMFA continued to bargain to the end. They asked the federal mediators Aug. 19 to see if the company would listen to a proposal that would have saved NWA $143.6 million. They would have presented a contract to their membership calling for a 20 percent cut in wages, 20 percent medical co-pays and 20 percent cuts in benefit premiums. AMFA also proposed as many as 1,300 job cuts, but wanted them spread out with a decent severance pay. But, according to Neil Hesselgrave, NWA Representative for AMFA Minnesota Local 5, the NWA came to the table with an ultimatum.
"The company gave us notice Thursday [Aug. 18] of the contract terms they would invoke at 12:01 a.m. Aug. 20," Hesselgrave told his members in an Aug. 26 letter. "We did not call a strike until 12:01 a.m. The company invoked—then we went on strike."
AMFA has already lost more than half its NWA members since 2001. Those remaining voted overwhelmingly in July to authorize a strike.
At ILWU longshore Local 10 membership meeting Aug. 18 President Trent Willis call on "all labor unions, labor councils and workers’ organizations, here and internationally, to honor the aircraft mechanics’ strike."
AMFA San Francisco Local 9 President Joe Prisco expressed his members’ thanks.
"ILWU members have been coming out and supporting the picket line, which is excellent. It’s more than a paper endorsement," Prisco told The Dispatcher.
ILWU International President Jim Spinosa sent a letter Aug. 22 to AMFA National Director O.V. Delle-Femine pledging the full solidarity of the ILWU.
"That the ILWU International President wrote a lengthy letter detailing his concerns and his directions to the membership was outstanding," Prisco told The Dispatcher. "The fact that he’s calling on the rest of the labor movement to get behind this is a big plus."
The International Association of Machinists has not supported AMFA, and there’s bad blood over the loss of IAM machinist jobs to AMFA. AMFA is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, but AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, while distancing himself from AMFA, pledged full support to the striking workers. Not many AFL-CIO unions have officially announced support of the AMFA strike, by many rank and filers have shown solidarity and walked the picket lines.
The Professional Airways Systems Specialists, the union representing FAA aircraft inspectors, sent a support letter Aug. 20 to AMFA expressing serious doubts that its depleted numbers of Airworthiness Inspectors would be able to sufficiently oversee the work of the scabs. NWA has the oldest fleet of the major airlines.
"Northwest Airlines is attempting to outsource AMFA jobs to other countries on a massive scale," PASS National Union Representative Jim Pratt wrote. "PASS believes that this is dangerous."
NWA spent 18 months and more than $100 million preparing a herd of 1,400 scabs to take union jobs the minute the strike began. The union believes NWA never intended to negotiate.
"The eight-month negotiating period has been an arrogant farce with a pre-determined ending," Delle-Femine said.
In all NWA hopes to take $1.1 billion out of the hides of its workers. It already got a 15 percent slice out of its 5,200 pilots’ wages last December, a savings of $250 million. Pilots say NWA will propose another 22.3 percent wage cut, to save another $300 million, and it also wants to eliminate 1,181 pilot jobs.
Professional Fight Attendants Assn. leaders had encouraged their NWA members to vote for a strike in sympathy with the AMFA workers, but the vote fell short. Since then, the PFAA says the company filed a frivolous lawsuit and sent harassing messages during the vote, all to encourage a "no" vote. The attendants may get another chance for a strike vote after their negotiations begin Aug. 30. NWA wants to carve $143 million out of its 10,000 attendants with a 20 percent pay cut and huge job losses.
"If NWA would get their way, more than 50 percent of our flying would be outsourced, resulting in the loss of thousands of U.S.-based flight attendant jobs," the PFAA website said Aug 26.
Northwest set itself up for what might be simultaneous strikes from mechanics, flight attendants and pilots.
"It certainly is a possibility that we might all be on the lines at once," MacFarlane said. "We would like to think that now that the pilots and attendant’s ox has been gored like ours’ has, maybe they’ll understand that this truly is a battle that all of us need to join against Northwest."
New bankruptcy laws will make it harder for companies to pay huge bonuses to executives and require restructuring plans in place sooner, with more input from creditors. Northwest might file before this takes effect Oct. 17. Bankruptcy could allow a judge to rewrite union contracts, abolish health care for active and retired members and slash pensions. Some industry analysts have suggested bankruptcy might be the corporate strategy of the future, a way to get federal judges to bust unions and turn the industry into a flying Wal-Mart. Long term solutions might be a way off.
"I think there’s an argument to be made for re-regulating the industry," MacFarlane said. "But that horse may have been out of the barn for so long there’s probably no going back. But clearly, airlines have become almost as important to our economy as utilities, and to allow the ‘free market’ to just run its full range, you certainly see what’s happening and it’s very disruptive."
As The Dispatcher goes to press more unions are offering support to AMFA’s workers, who believe they are at the beginning of industry-wide union busting schemes.
"On Wall Street they’re just sitting in their boardrooms smoking their cigars saying, ‘This is great. We don’t have to do anything. The unions are fighting among themselves. We don’t have to do anything except hire replacements,’" Prisco said.
