NOLC supports striking Northwest Airline mechanics

Delegates of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council in Portland voted unanimously Aug. 22 to support the 4,400 Northwest Airlines mechanics and cleaners who were forced to strike Aug. 19.

The workers, represented by the non-AFL-CIO Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), a New Hampshire-based group, walked out after Minnesota-based Northwest refused to budge in its demands that half of them be laid off and the rest take a 25 percent pay cut. In total, the two moves would cost workers approximately $176 million.

On the West Coast, Northwest Airlines maintains facilities in Portland, Seattle/Tacoma, Anchorage, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Approximately 3,000 people a day fly in and out of PDX. The airline has hubs in Detroit, Minneapolis, Memphis, Tokyo and Amsterdam.

There are 10 mechanics — members of AMFA Local 17 — on strike in Portland.

The request for strike support came from International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 8 after International President James Spinosa told his members — who were subjected to a Bush Administration Taft-Hartley injunction almost two years ago when West Coast port managers locked them out — to back the Northwest workers. “Help those workers in their struggle as if it were your own,” he said.

But the strike has received mixed reaction from union leaders nationally, due to AMFA’s history of raiding other AFL-CIO unions. Mechanics at Northwest and United both used to be represented by the Machinists Union.

The AFL-CIO-affiliated Air Line Pilots Association, whose 5,700 pilots previously agreed to $265 million in concessions to keep Northwest flying, are not honoring the mechanics’ picket line. Northwest ALPA chair Mark McClain said a sympathy strike would not be in the pilots’ best interests. 

Northwest’s flight attendants, who are members of a non-AFL-CIO union, also are working behind the line. The union is concerned about the condition of planes after Northwest brought in at least 1,300 replacement mechanics it had trained for a year and a half.

Machinists Union Vice President Robert V. Roach, who heads its transportation division, wrote AMFA chief O.V. Delle-Famine that “IAM members will not be duped into standing with AMFA. AMFA has never honored an IAM picket line.” Roach noted that even now, AMFA wants Machinists who still work at Northwest to yield $150 million more than the $107 million they have already given up in concessions.

Northwest’s concession demands for all its employees totals $1.1 billion.

And though the Machinists Union is angry at AMFA for raiding, Detroit Chair Robert DePace wrote Northwest’s labor relations chief that the Machinists’ contract “prevents Northwest from firing IAM-represented employees who honor picket lines.”

Northwest tried to recruit IAM District 143 members there to take vacant cleaners’ jobs. 

In Minnesota, where Northwest Airlines is based, Minnesota AFL-CIO President Ray Waldron said, “Northwest is just a bad employer. All you have to do is look at the record. When times were tough and they came to Minnesota to ask for money to keep them in business, everybody came to their aid. Taxpayers came to their rescue. All those employees in unions or in associations gave concessions over the years. Yet the company continues to demand more. The strike by mechanics demonstrates how far airline executives are willing to go to cut costs, destroy jobs, and break promises to workers and Minnesota taxpayers.”

After workers bailed Northwest out in 1986 and 1993, it reneged on promised compensation for their concessions, said Ken Schroeder, a 22-year general inspector: “That’s this company. That’s the way they do things.  The upper management treats you like dirt. They have never tried to appreciate the working people down on the floor.”

“They backed us into a corner,” said Janet White, a custodian who has been with Northwest for 30 years, dating back to Southern Airways. “This is the only recourse that we have. I feel like these guys are striking for my job.”  White said she’s 5-1/2 months from retirement and doesn’t understand Northwest’s hard line, including its refusal to offer buyouts to employees like her:  “We know we have to take a pay cut. None of us had a problem with that.  But they wanted to take everything else. Why?”

“They had no intention of signing a contract,” Dewey Hogenson, an engine shop inspector for 24 years, said of Northwest’s management. “It’s just two words — union busting.” 

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.