STORM2K

Northwest Mechanics are on strike

No more talkin', we're walkin'.

The 30 day cooling off period ended at 11:01 Friday night but a few minutes before that Jim Young, the head of the mechanics union came out of the negotiations and announced that the mechanics would strike.

Mechanics were already at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with picket signs in hand.

Northwest and the mechanics met separately with a federal mediator on Friday, but union officials had said early Friday evening that the two sides were not meeting face-to-face.

Steve MacFarlane, assistant national director for the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, has said at 8:30 Friday night that it would take a miracle to avert a strike.

It appears no miracle occurred.

MacFarlane said union mechanics in Minneapolis and Detroit had been asked to leave early. Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch confirmed that "some" mechanics were "being relieved" before their scheduled shifts ended, but wouldn't specify where. He said the mechanics would be paid through the end of their shifts.

Northwest has vowed to keep flying despite the strike. It has lined up 1,900 temporary workers, vendors, and managers, including hundreds of licensed mechanics, to take over. Some of those replacement workers were reportedly being brought onto airport property as union members were leaving.

Northwest, which says it is losing about $4 million a day, wants its mechanics, cleaners and custodians to take a 25 percent pay cut. It also wants the right to lay off another 2,000 so it can send more of their work to outside vendors. Northwest has already slashed their ranks from 8,390 in 2002 to 4,427 now.

Northwest has said it needs $176 million worth of savings from mechanics as part of $1.1 billion in annual savings from all its employees. It said it made its "last, best" offer on Thursday night, though it wouldn't give details. The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association said the offer wasn't good enough.

Northwest, the nation's fourth-largest airline, and its regional carriers operate more than 1,500 flights to 750 cities. It has hubs in Detroit, Minneapolis, Memphis, Tokyo, and Amsterdam. It employs about 40,000 people, including 4,427 in the mechanic's union.

(Copyright 2005 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)

I just read that story on a local news site.

The flight attendants and pilots have decided not to go on strike in sympathy.

The mechanics had better practice saying "You want fries with that?".

Doesn't sound like there have been many delays because of it. I am flying Northwest airlines in Oct when I go to Minnesota. Hopefully all is well by then.

Otherwise I may have to hop on my avatar duck and fly him to Minnesota

My sister, her ex, and his second wife all work for NW in the Twin Cities (he's a mechanic). In addition, all three have taken pay cuts over the past several years running, medical benefit premiums have skyrocketed and their pension plan will probably be abolished (their ages are 49, 53, and 56). Yet top management continues to pull in astronomically high salaries as well as guaranteed perks and pensions. All three of them agree the company is in major trouble with a capital T -- as are most of the other major airlines (except SW, at the present).

Furthermore, United and Delta are living on borrowed time. All these airlines have major hub cities whose economies heavily depend on the airline industry. For example, I'm not sure of the exact statistic, but just in the Twin Cities alone, the number of people who are directly connected to the airlines is incredibly high. New York, L.A., Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, etc. are in the same situation. These local economies would be seriously affected by a crashing of the airline industry. Add to this the disturbing domino effect which the self-destruction of the airline industry would have on the whole national economy: not just a secondary effect on businesses providing services to the airline and its employees, but the additional effects of restricted leisure/business travel and freight delivery regionally and nationally, the effects of those disruptions, and, as the old shampoo commercial used to say "and so on, and so on, and so on...."


P.S.We're flying from West Palm Beach to Minneapolis for a major convention in mid-September. We very rarely fly NW. Guess which airline we chose this time (from 2 comparable prices)?? Yep....

My sister and her family plan on flying with Northwest to St. Louis for a wedding in September.

Eric

Well, although this is bad for NW, its good that airline employees are finally standing up to the management. These pay cuts are rediculous. I'm not sure about mechanics, gate workers, etc., but I know several pilots who have suffered because of the huge pay cuts that they have been taking. Delta pilots took a 33% pay cut; US Airways pays crap now, the others aren't much better.