BY MARY MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Some 6,000 pilots organized by the Air
Line Pilots Association (ALPA) struck Northwest Airlines at
midnight on August 28, over wages and job security. The pilots'
action has grounded Northwest's fleet of 406 aircraft and
caused the indefinite cancellation of 1,700 daily flights.
As we go to press, Northwest has begun laying off 27,000 workers, including mechanics, flight attendants, and customer service representatives.
Pilots set up picket lines at the company's six pilot bases in Anchorage, Detroit, Honolulu, Minneapolis, Memphis and Seattle. In Detroit, the picket lines were greeted with support from some locked out Detroit newspaper workers, and Machinists union members at Northwest.
In Minneapolis, Northwest's headquarters and main hub, where the contract negotiations were held, the pilots set up informational picket lines two hours prior to the strike deadline.
When the deadline passed, they picked up "On Strike" signs and received cheers from a small group of young people and other workers who had come out to show support, as well as sympathetic honks from passing motorists.
In their 1993 contract, the pilots, like flight attendants and ground operations workers, gave massive concessions to Northwest, the number four domestic carrier in revenues, including a 15 percent pay cut. This time the pilots are demanding a 15 percent pay raise over three years, a retroactive pay increase back to October 1996 when their contract expired, an end to the two-tier wage scale whereby junior pilots start off at $27,000 a year, and protection against layoffs that result from alliances the company makes with other major carriers like Continental or through affiliation to smaller commuter outfits that use small regional jets.
The company's final offer included a 9 percent pay raise over four years, a reduction in the two-tier pay structure time from five to three years, a lump sum signing bonus instead of retroactive pay, a profit-sharing plan tied to the company's profit margin, and layoff protection only through one year after the contract expires.
Attitudes of other NWA workers
ALPA has not asked the International Association of
Machinists (IAM) or the Teamsters, which organize ground
operations workers and flight attendants respectively, to honor
its picket lines. But most Machinists and other unionists at
Northwest support the pilots strike. Both of these unions are
in the middle of their own contract negotiations with the
company.
"The pilots are not asking for anything outlandish," said Ron Baldwin, a ramp trainer at Washington National Airport, and former striker at the now-defunct Eastern Airlines, in an interview with the Militant. "You have to look closely at the company's offer. The profit-sharing deal is tied to a level of profit in the future that is questionable. And on top of the concessions that all the employees gave, the company is saying the stocks they gave us [in lieu of wage raises in 1993] should be considered part of the workers' compensation package. I have a problem with that. Our employee stock, unlike management's, had sales restrictions. So when the stocks hit high levels in the spring, the CEOs made millions because they could freely exercise their stock options whereas many employees had to sell off their stocks earlier, piecemeal, and at lower rates due to monetary need."
Randy Roles, a ramp worker at Washington National with nine years at Northwest, stated: "Three days into the pilots strike, the company is losing millions. So my question is: What is the company's plan? To run down the stock so they can buy it up again? To break the unions? Our plan can only be to hold on strong, to stick together and get everything we can now. Because in the next contract, if the company is not showing a profit they are going to say they need another pay cut."
Other workers, worried about layoffs that became effective on September 3, wondered if perhaps the pilots were going too far. "I know the pilots got pushed into the strike because the company let things go on too long with them, but I'm also concerned that if the pilots ask for too much, a lot of jobs in and out of the airlines could be lost," said Patricia Butler, a ramp worker for five years at the same airport.
Northwest pilots walked off the job four times between 1969 and 1978. In the previous three decades, Northwest pilots conducted strike seminars for co-workers at other airlines and in 1968 wrote a strike manual still used today by pilot groups at all major carriers. One of the main founders of ALPA, which was first established in the late 1920s, was Charles Holman, a fired Northwest pilot.
In announcing the strike to the press, Northwest pilot Steve Zoller, a Master Executive Council Chairman for ALPA, stated: "Northwest management has refused to seriously negotiate.... We believe our proposals are fair, reasonable and affordable."
Company propaganda offensive
Northwest Airlines, lost no time in launching a media
campaign including press statements, TV interviews, and full-
page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today
to portray the pilots as greedy and insensitive to the needs of
the flying public. Northwest spokesman John Austin told the
press the pilots had rejected an offer that was "abundantly
fair and reasonable" and said the pilots "would not temper
their short-term self-interest." He added, "I cannot overstate
the devastation the pilots will cause to the airline and the
community." Coverage in the big-business dailies, like a the
August 31 front page New York Times article headlined, "Strike
By Pilots Cuts the Cord that Sustains North Dakota," have
bolstered this claim.
Northwest's newspaper ads highlight the highest salary senior pilots get and quote an ALPA statement that the pilots are seeking a contract that would "set a standard for pilot contracts in the United States, and, at the same time, influence pilots contracts throughout the world." The company's ad copy then reads, "It makes us wonder, who are they really working for?"
The strike came after nearly two years of failed government- mediated negotiations between the pilots' union and Northwest. Under provisions of the Federal Railway Labor Act, railroad and airline workers' strikes and other labor actions can be thwarted by lengthy government "mediated" negotiations, government-imposed "cooling off" periods, and back to work orders.
Government strikebreaking role
The company had hoped that the Clinton administration would
intervene to order the pilots back to work before the September
5-6 Labor Day weekend, which is a holiday for most working
people and a high travel period. President William Clinton
ordered a meeting between Transportation Secretary Rodney
Slater and company and union officials September 1. Clinton
recently used the Railway Labor Act to end a strike by
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way (BMWE) track workers at
Conrail within 10 hours, as he did against the American Airline
pilots strike in February 1997.
There are indications that the government may let the strike unfold in the hopes that the employers can push back the pilots and also the demands for substantial wage raises by other unionists at the carrier.
Northwest has a borrowed about $2 billion and plans to use another $1 billion from its own funds for a $3 billion war chest to withstand losses of $15 million a day during the strike. The company layed off 27,500 workers on September 2. At Atlanta's DC-9 maintenance base, the company has been contracting out maintenance work for a month leading up to the pilots strike. Workers had put up a cardboard sign at one of the maintenance shops: "Big Garage Sale Friday August 28, 1998. Honeycomb Shop Going Out of Business. Mech[anics] for Hire (Cheap)."
On September 1, Standard & Poor's Corp. placed Northwest's double B corporate credit rating on its Credit-Watch list with negative implications as a result of the strike. S&P said the airline's rating could be lowered more "if the strike and its settlement are sufficiently costly and materially impact Northwest's financial position." Work-safe and work-to-rule campaigns conducted on the job by International Association of Machinists (IAM) members and flight attendants in the spring and summer, along with massive refusals of voluntary overtime shifts, resulted in a record number of flight cancellations and cost Northwest $72 million in the second quarter.
Machinists have authorized strike
Among the strongest supporters of the pilots strike are the
other Northwest unionized employees who faced the same demand
for concessions from the company, which resulted in a 12-15 per
cent pay cut in their previous contracts. The 27,000-strong IAM
ground operations work force voted down a contract offer by
Northwest on July 29 and also voted to authorize a strike, if
needed.
Subsequently, the IAM has asked to be released from the nearly two years of government-mediated negotiations with the company, which have failed to settle the main issues of pay, retroactive compensation, and job security. These are the same issues that pilots and flight attendants face. A release from negotiations by the federal government would start a 30-day "cooling off period" at the end of which the IAM would be free to strike if no agreement has been reached with the company. No release has been granted as of press time.
The 11,000 flight attendants at Northwest organized in Teamsters Local 2000 are conducting national actions to bring attention to their contract fight. On September 4 the flight attendants will conduct airport rallies at the company's flight attendant bases across the country. They are asking supporters to bring alarm clocks and to sound the alarms to "send management a wake-up call" as a Teamsters' leaflet explains.
It is this contract fight on two other union fronts that the company must weigh in its stand-off with the pilots union. An article in the Wall Street Journal on August 31 said Northwest is fearful that if they meet most of the pilots demands the other unions will demand similar settlements. This point was not lost on Machinists members, who were left with only painting and clean-up projects at work in the first week of the strike before the layoffs took affect. Unionists made use of the down time to discuss fully all the angles of the contract fight by Northwest workers.
In a related development the Airline Mechanics Fraternal Organization (AMFA), a company-minded outfit, will try to break Northwest's 9,100 cleaners and mechanics away from the Machinists in an upcoming election to decertify the IAM. The federal National Mediation Board has given the go-ahead to AMFA's union-busting bid. For years AMFA has tried unsuccessfully to win representation of mechanics, and more recently the cleaners, away from the IAM at the major airlines. AMFA's refusal to support union strikes and ties to the antiunion Right to Work Foundation repel many union fighters.
In other developments, Air Canada pilots went on strike over pay and working conditions on September 2. Also 2,100 ALPA- organized pilots at Trans World Airline (TWA) have agreed by a 3-to-2 margin to a four-year contract that would give the pilots their first raise in 12 years. After a decade of concessions to the company, TWA pilots average 60 percent less pay than pilots at the other major airlines.
The last major airlines strike was at Eastern Airlines in 1989. Machinist members defeated Eastern boss Frank Lorenzo's drive to break the unions. Eastern went out of business in January, 1991.
Mary Martin is a member of IAM Local 1759 and works on the ramp at Northwest at Washington National Airport. IAM members Jeff Jones in Minneapolis, Arlene Rubenstein and Mike Italie in Atlanta, Mark Friedman in Los Angeles; and UAW member John Sarge in Detroit contributed to this article.