BY MARY MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - On June 12 unionized workers at Northwest Airlines carried out a day of coordinated informational picketing in airports in thirteen cities. The actions were part of a campaign by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) to demand a new contract with a wage raise and protest the sluggish pace of the federally mediated negotiations.

On June 16 the IAM announced it reached a tentative settlement with Northwest Airlines. As the Militant went to press, no details had been made public. IAM officials said it could take four to five weeks before union members reviewed and voted on the agreement.

The IAM, which organizes 27,000 mechanics, ticket agents, and ground operations workers at Northwest, has been in more than 20 months of contract negotiations with the company. The central issues for the union are a wage raise with retroactive pay for the period since the old contract expired in October 1996, and a pension increase.

The informational picket lines were set up at Northwest terminals in Atlanta; Chicago; Detroit; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tennessee; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New York's Kennedy and La Guardia airports; Newark; Philadelphia; Seattle; San Francisco; and Washington, D.C. Participation in the actions ranged in size from a half dozen in Washington to 100 in Los Angeles.

Northwest flight attendants and pilots joined the IAM workers on the picket lines in several cities. The Teamsters union, which organizes the flight attendants, and the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA), are also in stalled contract negotiations with the company. In their last contracts, all three unions gave concessions in wages and work rules to the airline. Over the past decade the IAM has given $897 million in concessions, and in exchange received some stock and one pay raise of between 1.5 and 3 percent.

At the international airport in Atlanta, 75 picketing members of IAM Local 2665 handed out 4,000 leaflets explaining their contract fight to passengers and other airline workers.

In Detroit at a picket line of 60 from all three unions, flight attendants distributed a flyer to passengers explaining that the company was to blame for the widespread delays in Northwest flights. For two years Northwest bosses have refused to negotiate a new contract with the flight attendants while granting huge salaries and bonuses to executives.

Many Machinists, flight attendants, and pilots have been participating in a "work safe" or "work-to-rule" campaign, refusing to take unsafe shortcuts or succumb to speedup pressures at work to solve the company's problems of chronic understaffing related to Northwest's competitive drive for higher profit. As a result more Northwest flights have been delayed or canceled. The company has publicly accused workers of disrupting operations and retaliated with firings, disciplinary write-ups, cancellation of vacation days, layoffs, and forced overtime.

The pilots union, which authorized a strike by a 99 percent vote in May, is facing employer demands for a three- tier wage scale and a 10 percent pay cut for the majority of the pilots.

At the Los Angeles International Airport, Brian Spencer, a young ramp worker who spent his day off on the picket line, told the Militant, " My father was a Steelworker and I saw the struggles they went through in Wisconsin. The companies were trying to rack up the USWA [United Steelworkers of America]. Young folk need to spend time to come up and picket. We have the union to protect our rights."

In a related development 18,000 United Airlines passenger service and reservations employees will vote in coming weeks on joining the IAM, which is conducting informational picketing at some United hubs. In addition, 850 ticket agents, aircraft cleaners, and baggage handlers at Mesaba Airlines will vote in July on joining the IAM. Northwest Airlines directs Masaba's flight operations under a 10-year agreement.

FAA investigation
The day of the IAM's national picketing, it was reported that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was investigating allegations that Northwest Airlines improperly maintained its DC-9 aircraft and that the FAA's inspector in Minneapolis did not properly oversee Northwest operations.

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Northwest has the oldest fleet of airplanes among major U.S. airlines. In 1994, as a cost-saving move, Northwest chose to begin a refurbishing program for the aging DC-9 fleet instead of replacing them with new aircraft. In 1996 in Atlanta and Minneapolis, Northwest engineers, who are nonunion, complained that tight deadlines and a shortage of maintenance staff were forcing them to neglect all but the most urgent maintenance directives of the FAA. Northwest asserts it addressed this problem by hiring more maintenance mechanics.

The numbers of recorded flight problems with the DC-9, however, is greater than for other airlines. These include fuel leaks, cabin pressurization problems; faulty landing gear indicators, and cargo hold corrosion that could compound fire hazards. These problems led to 217 unscheduled landings of Northwest's DC-9 aircraft in 1997. This compares with a combined total of 87 unscheduled DC-9 landings by Continental, Midwest Express, US Airways, and TWA.

Mary Martin is a member of IAM Local 1759 and a Northwest ramp worker in Washington, DC. Also contributing to this article were Northwest workers and IAM members Mark Friedman in Los Angeles; Jeff Jones and Tony Lane in Minneapolis; Olga Rodríguez, at New York's LaGuardia airport; and Mike Italie in Atlanta. Jay Ressler, a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 1299 in Detroit, also contributed.  
 
 
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