BY MARY MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Machinist union members at Northwest Airlines are conducting contract information discussions at union meetings around the country in preparation for a July 29 vote on the proposed new contract. The 27,000 International Association of Machinists (IAM) members who work at Northwest will also take a strike authorization vote on that date. Many of the contract discussion meetings have been heated, according to press reports and union members who participated in them. On July 14 in Minneapolis, more than 2,000 union members at Northwest Airlines attended all- day meetings for the different work shifts to raise their questions with union negotiators. One Machinist member termed the meeting "an all-day `Vote No' rally." After the meeting, Milo, a union member who works as an inspector at Northwest and asked that his last name not be used, told the Militant, "The company's greed knows no bounds. In the past we've fallen for the threat of globalization. But now, people have been more ready than ever to strike. I've never seen this level of unity between the different groups."

IAM members cite numerous provisions of the proposed contract they oppose including:

the lack of a retroactive pay raise for the two years since the previous contract expired;

the company's intention to increase part-time workers' hours to 31 hours per week, with no medical or other full- time benefits except for five annual paid holidays;

no protection against layoffs for workers hired after October 1996;

and no prohibition against further "farming out" or outsourcing of work now done by IAM members.

The proposed contract comes after 20 months of government-mediated negotiations and a decade of concessions taken by Northwest workers, including a 12-15 percent pay cut in 1993 Meanwhile, 10,000 flight attendants at Northwest Airlines, organized by the Teamsters Union, have been without a contract for 22 months. To win public support they have called August 7 airport rallies in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco.

No progress has been reported in the government-mediated negotiations between Northwest Airlines and the Airline Pilots Airline Association (ALPA) which represents 6,200 pilots at Northwest.

Mary Martin is a member of the IAM at Northwest. IAM members Jeff Jones in Minneapolis, Arlene Rubinstein in Atlanta, and Mark Friedman in Los Angeles contributed to this article.  
 
 
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