Chicago Tribune, December 27, 2005, Tuesday

Copyright 2005 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune

December 27, 2005 Tuesday
Chicagoland Final Edition

SECTION: BUSINESS ; ZONE CN; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Strikers facing a rough landing;
Four months into walkout by union mechanics and other workers, Northwest Airlines appears to have achieved an overwhelming victory

BYLINE: By Stephen Franklin, Tribune staff reporter.

DATELINE: ROMULUS, Mich.

BODY:
Like a tiny train circling a small track, Michael Trudeau marches on, clutching his picket sign in the fading sunlight and navigating his course from behind large snow goggles.
"I'm here to show Northwest there are some people who are not giving up," the short, middle-aged airline mechanic huffed in the bone-chilling air.
Trudeau has logged more than 600 miles since he began his four-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week vigil four months ago, a time when dozens of striking mechanics walked beside him here at a Northwest Airlines terminal at Detroit Metro Airport.
But just as his union brethren have largely disappeared, so, too, has the wallop behind the strike by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. It is one of few strikes in recent years by workers in the seriously troubled airline industry, and it appears headed for a grim ending.
All of the 4,400 strikers, which include cleaners and maintenance workers, have been replaced. At least 280 strikers and another 200 laid-off union members have crossed AMFA's picket lines. Not one of the six other unions at Northwest has honored the picket lines.
And, more significant, the airline appears to have successfully called the bet by mechanics, who were sure Northwest would stumble without them.
But it hasn't. Relying on a small number of new hires and outside firms, Northwest has shown the strikers to be replaceable.
Now, the union's members are voting on a contract that is essentially a good-bye kiss from Northwest. If workers approve it, they stand to receive four weeks of severance and six months of unemployment benefits. But union officials are urging their rank and file to reject it, even as some privately say there is little hope of beating the world's fourth-largest airline if the strike goes on.
Votes will be tallied Dec. 30.
Whatever the outcome, the question lingers: How did it come to this?
The 12,000-member union, which virtually exploded in the last decade, drew workers away from other unions at Northwest, United and Southwest Airlines with promises of being a tough, "no concessions" bargainer. Why has it fared so badly in its battle with Northwest?
Steve MacFarlane, AMFA's assistant national director, blames Northwest's other unions, which declined to help shut down the airline, he said. Several union leaders personally assured him that their members would honor AMFA's picket lines, MacFarlane said. He would not name those leaders.
However, the lack of solidarity goes beyond Northwest's gates.
"The dirty little secret is that the labor movement abandoned these guys," said Robert Bruno, a labor expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The United Auto Workers union has been the only major union to back AMFA, providing more than $800,000 in support for the strikers.
Leaders of the Professional Flight Attendants Association, which represents 10,000 at Northwest, also have backed the strike. But their members voted against a strike of their own.
But some labor experts and union officials say AMFA is responsible for some of its lack of support and was naive to think it could count on organized labor's support, considering its history of election battles with the Teamsters and International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
For years other unions mocked the efforts of O.V. Delle-Femine, AMFA's founder, to create a craft union for mechanics. Their derision turned to rage when AMFA scooped up members from those unions by appealing to their discontent.
Northwest's mechanics quit the machinists union for AMFA in 1998, and United's mechanics followed in 2003.
Machinists spokesman Rick Sloan said there was no way his union would have supported AMFA. Not, he said, "after a 40-year history of them preaching, `We can stand alone.' And a much more recent history of intimidation of our membership."
There were other dangers AMFA should have heeded, labor experts say.
Anticipating problems with the union, Northwest set up a costly training program for mechanics that was not kept a secret. That gave Northwest several hundred replacement workers the day AMFA's members walked out. The airline also was able to rely upon the deep pool of thousands of laid-off airline mechanics.
The strike also played into Northwest's budget-cutting strategy and efforts to pare the number of mechanics on its payroll, experts add.
Indeed, the number of mechanics declined significantly at Northwest, dropping to more than 3,600 when the union struck in August from more than 7,500 five years ago.
The airline said it now relies on 880 mechanics and outside contractors to do the strikers' work. Northwest officials would not identify the firms nor indicate how many are outside the United States.
Cornell University labor expert Rick Hurd likens AMFA's strike decision to the "mistakes" made in the 1980s by blue-collar unions faced with collapsing industries. They refused to believe companies' stories of financial woes or accept their concession demands and soon found their members out of work, he said.
MacFarlane defends AMFA's decision.
"It was absolutely the right thing to do," he said, predicting that if the union had not struck, the airline would have locked its members out because it was intent on cutting jobs and wages.
But even Ray Rogers, a labor consultant recently hired by AMFA to buoy its fight against Northwest, questions its decision to strike.
"Why would anybody think they can't replace mechanics," said Rogers.
In comparison, Rogers said, the campaign he launched for AMFA, aimed at Northwest's board of directors, could lead to changes at the airline.
As John Budd, a University of Minnesota labor expert, said, there are times when emotion overwhelms reason, and this may have been one for AMFA.
After years of facing cutbacks within their ranks and of vowing to stand up to the company, Northwest's mechanics may have been unable to resist the emotional tug that drew them toward a strike, he said.
Dennis Sutton, a 16-year veteran mechanic and vice president of the union's Local 5 in Detroit, can attest to the emotional turmoil workers have faced before and after the strike began.
Sutton said several strikers in his local have filed for bankruptcy. Many have moved elsewhere for work or started new careers. And some have foundered, unfamiliar with job hunting after years at the airline or lacking the credentials needed for well-paying jobs.
Donald Inks, who was a airplane cleaner at Northwest, is one of those who left town in search of work. He recently found a $9.50-per-hour job without benefits at a small factory in Grand Rapids, Mich.
"I'm starting my life all over at53," he said. "But I'm glad to be out of the airline industry because of the way the company treated me."
Sutton is the keeper of Local's 5 memory, since he opens and closes the tent camp daily, located behind a UAW local, for the handful of strikers who still gather.
"We will wait till hell freezes over" declares a large white sign near the time-worn Army tent where the group huddles around an electric heater.
And Sutton feels the local's pulse, answering calls at its office from strikers asking about help, or asking if there is any hope of a settlement, or if there is a reason they shouldn't take a job somewhere else.
Lately, he has been advising them to vote against the contract and to hold out for their own "dignity."
Henry Bienek, 51, an 18-year-mechanic, stopped calling a while ago. That is because he went back to work at Northwest in November, convinced that the union did not have a plan to get its members' jobs back.
"The union boasted quite seriously that we could not be replaced, and they replaced us the first day," he said. "I don't want anything to do with the union anymore."
But Mark Whitney, 42, dearly misses the union and the bond he felt with fellow workers.
"They [Northwest] didn't take my money. They took my family," he said recently at the local's offices.
Yet there's no doubt he has suffered financially, going from a $21-per-hour job as an airplane cleaner to $9 an hour as a part-time school janitor. The airline wiped out the jobs of about 800 cleaners and custodians just before the strike began.
To feed his family, Whitney has turned to a food pantry at a local church. His wife has taken an all-night job as a stocker at a discount store.
"Emotionally, I'm a mess," said Whitney.
Not long ago he spotted a Northwest colleague who went back to work. He trailed him through a store and caught up to him. When his friend smiled and asked how he was doing, Whitney said he glowered and shouted back his reply.
"I'm doing terrible," he said. "Terrible."
- - -
Other Northwest workers accept cuts
Air Line Pilots Association (5,000 members). Agreed to temporary wage cuts and other reductions worth up to $215 million annually. Agreed to permanent reduction worth about $250 million a year.
Professional Flight Attendants Association (8,000 members). Agreed to temporary wage and benefit cuts of $117 million a year.
Aircraft Technical Support Association (200 members). Approved a new contract with $2.25 million annually in concessions, including a 9.9 percent wage reduction.
Northwest Airlines Meteorology Association (20 members). Approved a new contract with cuts that saves the airline about $150,000 annually.
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (14,000 members). Agreed to temporary wage and benefit cuts valued at $114 million annually.
Transport Workers Union (160 flight dispatchers and planners). Approved a new contract with $1.5 million in annual savings.
Salaried and management These non-union workers have gone through two rounds of pay cuts worth $71 million annually. About 3,000 employees are affected.
-- Mark Skertic
Source: Northwest Airlines

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Michael Trudeau, a Northwest Airlines mechanic for 25 years, estimates he has put in 630 miles on the picket line at Detroit Metro Airport.

PHOTO: Striking Northwest Airlines workers warm up recently before joining the picket line. All 4,400 union mechanics and other workers who walked off their jobs in August have been replaced. Photos for the Tribune by Jeffrey Sauger.
PHOTOS 2