Detroit Support

2007 - First Action Alert of the Year!

2007-01-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

IT'S STILL ON!

The Goodyear Labor Dispute is over, but the solidarity lives on. A benefit has been in the planning for a couple months, and the Steelworkers decided to go on with the plans. So please come to eat some delicious Wobbly Kitchen spaghetti and celebrate with the victorious Goodyear strikers, who brought us a rare victory for the new year.

Saturday, January 13 @5pm
USW Local 1299
11424 W/ Jefferson Ave
River Rouge 48218
$10.00 donation requested.

The Kitchen is planning regular solidarity events this year. If you are interested in attending and you have ideas, please write me bigrafx - at - comcast.net and I'll pass them along.

The next event is tentatively scheduled for February 17 (location TBA) and will benefit the UAW strikers of Elkhart Indiana, makers of fine musical instruments, who have been out for several months. The new edition of Solidarity Magazine (http://www.uaw.org/solidarity/) will feature a story on Elkhart. What better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than to show your love for working men and women?!

If by chance you will have other plans that night, you can still contribute to these brave people by sending a donation to

Food 4 Strikers
58558 Ardmore Dr.
Elkhart, IN 46517

From USLAW website: “Workers of UAW Local 364 in Elkhart Indiana have been on strike for eight months at the Conn-Selmer's Vincent Bach musical instrument factory. Conn-Selmer is a subsidary of Steinway Inc. There are 230 workers on strike they ask us to call these numbers at let them no we support them and the story is getting out.”

Picket Lotus International Company

2006-04-19T21:44:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

20 Latino workers were dismissed/walked out of Lotus International Company. They were not paid overtime, faced discrimination and health and safety issues, and were forced into a pay decrease with a higher production rate. When they complained yesterday, they were fired and immediately replaced. They want to demand the overtime pay they are owed for several years of work, want their jobs back and want to maintain their higher level of pay.

Please join them at their picket line at 7am this Friday morning (April 21). We are meeting at La Sed at 6am (on the corner of Clark and Vernor in SW Detroit) to caravan to the company. You may join us at La Sed or meet us at the factory. The address is 6880 Commerce Blvd, Canton, MI 48187 (map of near location).

They want as much support as possible, but they also want to keep it enough on the down low so that the company will be surprised at their picket.

Please foward to your lists.

Latinos Unidos of Detroit

Two NYT articles by Ben Stein

2006-02-17T19:50:00.000-05:00

> New York Times
> January 29, 2006
> Everybody's Business
> When You Fly in First Class, It's Easy to Forget the Dots
> By BEN STEIN
> Correction Appended
> ONE of the best conspiracy movies ever made is the perfect British classic, "The Third Man." In the most haunting scene, the villain, played adroitly by Orson Welles, takes Joseph Cotten, the good guy, up in a Ferris wheel. The villain, named Harry Lime, has been selling adulterated penicillin in postwar Vienna, making a fortune and causing children to become paralyzed and die.
> Mr. Cotten's character, a pulp fiction writer named Holly Martins, asks him how he could do such an evil thing for money. The two men are at the top of the Ferris wheel, and the people below them look like tiny dots. Mr. Welles's villain looks down and says, "Tell me, would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?"
> This scene comes to mind when I think of Glenn F. Tilton and other executives of the UAL Corporation and the hapless employees of its primary business, United Airlines. Its history is a perfect text for the ethical morass in which American business often finds itself.
> United is one of the proudest names in airline history. It has long been a synonym for fine service and extensive, convenient routes. In the early 1990's, when some investment bankers were casting around for a way to make tens of millions of dollars, they came up with a doozy: the employees of UAL would give up some of their salaries and benefits in exchange for stock in UAL, eventually becoming UAL's largest owner through an employee stock ownership plan.
> The deal went through > -> with staggering compensation to Wall Street > -> and in 1994 the American employees of UAL, as a group, became its largest owners. Within a few years, overseas personnel were allowed the privilege of tossing their life savings into UAL, too.
> Trouble was not far behind. The employees found management demanding pay cuts, big (and, for passengers, inconvenient) changes and cuts in scheduling and services, and even silly changes in their once-great flight attendant uniforms. Then came the blows of 9/11 and a recession, and then rising fuel costs. There were demands for more cuts in pay and benefits and more layoffs. That was not enough. About three years ago, UAL was "forced" to enter bankruptcy to stay alive.
> This step meant that UAL could drastically cut workers' pay > -> and it did. Pensions were simply jettisoned and made the burden of the federal government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation , which meant cuts of close to two-thirds in some pilots' pension payments. And, of course, the bankruptcy simply eliminated all of that equity in UAL that the employees had bought with their hard-earned savings.
> Thus, in a series of evil events, management of UAL basically ruined the lives of the employee-owners, if that is not putting too fine a point on it, by taking away their savings, incomes and pensions. (I am indebted to my pal, Phil DeMuth, for much of this research.)>
> All right, you might say. What else could management have done amid high fuel costs and a deregulated, supercompetitive market? That's "creative destruction," and it's good for the economy, some of my fellow Republicans and admirers of the free market might say. But what about the rules of law and common decency? Because, you see, there is a bit more to the story.
> Now UAL has been reorganized. It is preparing to emerge from bankruptcy. It will soon have a stock offering. This offering is expected to raise very roughly $6 billion. It is presumably worth that because UAL now has such low labor costs that it may actually make a profit of some size. (I'll believe it when I see it.)
> Here comes the good part: management has asked the bankruptcy court to let it have > -> free > -> roughly 15 percent of the stock in the new company, or about $900 million. Mr. Tilton, the chief executive, who plays the Orson Welles character in this drama, would get about $90 million personally for his hard work shepherding UAL through bankruptcy (for which he was already paid multiple millions of dollars).
> The bankruptcy court, instead of ordering Mr. Tilton's arrest, instead cut the management share to about 8 percent, so he will get more than $40 million, more or less. That is more than Lee R. Raymond, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil , one of the most successful companies of all time, was paid in 2004 (not counting Mr. Raymond's 28 million shares of restricted stock).
> So here it is in a nutshell: employees are goaded into investing a big chunk of their wages and benefits in UAL stock. They lose that. Then they lose big parts of their pay and pensions. They become peons of UAL. Management gets $480 million, more or less. "Creative destruction?" Or looting?
> Wait, Mr. Tilton and Mr. Bankruptcy Judge. The employees were the owners of UAL. They were the trustors, and Mr. Tilton and his pals were trustees for them. How were the trustors wiped out while the trustees, the fiduciaries, became fantastically rich? Is this the way capitalism is supposed to work? Trustors save up, and their agents just take their savings away from them?
> If the company is worth so much that management has hundreds of millions coming to them, shouldn't the employee-owners get a taste? Does capitalism mean anything if the owners of the capital can be wiped out while their agents grow wealthy? Is this a way to encourage savings and the ownership society? Or is this a matter of to him who hath shall be given?
> I know that this is basically the same story I described recently concerning the Delphi Corporation , where something similar is going on. But that's exactly the point. Management is using competition, higher fuel costs and every other cost complaint to cut the pay and pensions of its own employees while enriching itself.
> And I can well imagine what goes through Mr. Tilton's mind as he does it: "Hey, I'm a great executive. Great executives in private-equity firms make more than I do. Why shouldn't I get the moolah? Basically, I've worked it so UAL is now a private-equity deal anyway. That's what it's all about now, isn't it? Who's got the most at the end of the day at Bighorn or the Reserve or whatever golf course I choose to retire at? And, anyway, wouldn't you take $48 million for a few of those dots we used to call our employees and owners to stop moving?"
> Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.
>
> Correction: Feb. 5, 2006, Sunday:
>
> Because of an editing error, the Everybody's Business column last Sunday, about executive pay at the UAL Corporation, misstated part of the compensation for the leader of another company in 2004. Lee R. Raymond, then the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, received restricted stock wo> rth $28 million; he did not receive 28 million shares of restricted stock.
> * Copyright 2006HYPERLINK "http://www.nytco.com/"The New York Times Company
>
> February 12, 2006
> Everybody's Business
> New Front: Protecting America's Investors
> By BEN STEIN
> IN the tiny room where I am writing this missive, there are four little display cases and a framed diploma, among many other mementos. The diploma is for my father-in-law, Dale Denman Jr. of Arkansas, and it is from the United States Military Academy, dated June 6, 1944 > -> a day when quite a lot was happening of military significance in France.
> Next to that is a display case with two little stars. One is a Silver Star that my father-in-law won in Europe several months after he graduated. It is for running along a road under heavy German machine-gun fire to call in artillery to save the company for which he was a forward artillery observer. Next to it is a Bronze Star that my father-in-law, then a colonel, won in Vietnam in 1966 for holding his unit together when it was ambushed by a Vietcong force and would have been cut to pieces without him.
> I have been thinking a lot lately about these heirlooms that Colonel Denman left to my wife and me. That's because of some mail I have been getting about my recent articles in this space about the way high executives have been treating their employees and stockholders. What I said two weeks ago about UAL, the parent company of United Airlines, prompted hundreds of e-mail messages. (I have still not even remotely caught up with all of them because I read them myself > -> no secretary here.)
> Several people sent clippings describing how UAL provided Glenn F. Tilton, who was living in San Francisco when it hired him as chairman and chief executive, with a suite in a luxury hotel when he spent time at its headquarters in Chicago. UAL was paying for the suite > -> which cost $18,000 a month, according to The San Francisco Chronicle > -> while it was reorganizing its finances under bankruptcy court protection and telling tens of thousands of workers that their jobs had been eliminated, their pay cut, their pensions terminated or all of the above because the company was broke.
> Some of the letter writers recalled how UAL spent an average of $10 million a month on lawyers, accountants and investment bankers for 37 months while UAL was in bankruptcy, and yet was unable to pay its employees their pensions.
> Now UAL has emerged from bankruptcy with a mighty flourish, and an allowance of hundreds of millions of dollars for its top executives. Some letters pointed out that one of UAL's board members is none other than our old friend Robert S. Miller, chief executive of Delphi , the auto parts maker.
> Delphi also recently entered bankruptcy > -> but proposed to the bankruptcy court a payment of well over $100 million to its top executives to keep them happy while it was in bankruptcy. Mr. Miller, who goes by Steve, a version of his middle name (not the one who sings "Fly Like an Eagle," but an artist of sorts nonetheless), has told Delphi's workers that they will have to take pay cuts of roughly two-thirds in order to save the business.
> But my favorite communication, the one that made me stay up nights, was from a United States Army sergeant who has done two combat tours in Iraq and two more in Afghanistan, and is now home in Georgia training others to serve in those wars. I have been pals with this man for a couple of years now, and we talk on the phone. He has been following my articles online, and he simply asked, "Was this what I was fighting for in Iraq?"
> The question haunts me, not only because of UAL and Delphi, but also because there is something deeply broken about the corporate system in America. Long ago, my pop was pals with Harlow H. Curtice, the president of > General Motors in its glory days in the 1950's. Mr. Curtice presided over a spectacularly powerful and profitable G.M.
> For that, in his peak year as I recall from my youth, he was paid about $400,000 plus a special superbonus of $400,000, which made him one of the highest-paid executives in America. At that time, a line worker with overtime might have made $10,000 a year. In those days, that differential was considered very large > -> very roughly 40 times the assembly line worker's pay, without bonus; very roughly 80 times with bonus. A differential of more like 10 to 20 times was more the norm.
> Now C.E.O.'s routinely take home hundreds of times what the average worker is paid, whether or not the company is doing well. The graph for the pay of C.E.O.'s is a vertical line in the last five years. The graph for workers' pay is a flat line > -> in every sense.
> Now, my fellow free-market fans may well say: "Hey, stop your whining. This is the free market at work." Only it isn't the free market at work. It's a kleptocracy at work. (I am indebted to another of my correspondents for the word.) What's happening here is that the governance system for many > -> by no means all > -> corporations has simply stopped working.
> For centuries, the idea has held that the stockholders own the company. They are the trustors. The trustors select directors who in turn hire a chief executive and other top officers and then keep an eye on them for the stockholders. They > -> the chief executive, other top officers and the directors > -> are all agents for the stockholders, many of whom are often the employees, as is the case at UAL.
> But what has happened is that > -> as in a corrupt, failed third-world state > -> the trustees in too many cases are captives of the C.E.O. and his colleagues; they owe both their places on the board and their emoluments to the chief executive, and they exercise no meaningful restraint at all on managers. The directors are instead a sort of praetorian guard, protecting management from its real bosses, the stockholders, as management sucks the blood out of the company.
> I am by no means saying this is the standard or the usual way business is done in this country. Most managements are still honest and hard-working, I believe. But far too many are simply in the catbird seat to take what is not decently theirs from people who cannot afford to be taken.
> Government, meanwhile, does nothing, or next to nothing. Courts, especially bankruptcy courts, do nothing. And the employees and stockholders and the whole society are looted. Maybe it's not looting in the legal sense, but something basic is removed from the society. In the capitalist society, the most basic foundation is trust. But in today's world, trust is abused, mocked, drained of meaning.
> Again, I am not talking everywhere, by any means. I work with many, many businessmen and businesswomen, and a huge majority are honest and amazingly hard-working. I am sure that this is true nationally. But enough are not so honest and hard-working that it takes a toll on the rest of us.
> Don't get me wrong. I am not a newborn. I know that looting is not new. Man is highly flawed when money is on the table and not guarded well. I saw it and wrote about it in great detail when Michael R. Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert were ascendant, and in many other cases. It was terrible and dreadful, at least in my view, back then in the 1980's. It has always been terrible.
> But there is something new and unlovely that my pal in the Army brought up. Now, we are engaged in a war. More than 100,000 Americans are fighting far from home. Many don't come back. Many come home crippled. They are fighting for a vision of a just and decent society back home in glorious, shining, blessed America. And back home, meanwhile> , the looters are running wild, taking the meaning out of that vision of America, taking some > -> by no means all > -> of the beauty out of America as a land of justice and fairness.
> ONE of my correspondents wrote that she, a flight attendant at United Airlines, had played by the rules, believed what her bosses told her, trusted that the laws would protect her, believed that fairness would triumph in the end because it's America. "I guess that makes me a fool in today's world," she said, because now she is broke, with no job, barely any pension and no faith. While the soldiers are fighting to protect us from the terrorists with bombs, too few are at home protecting us from the terrorists with briefcases. There aren't a lot of such terrorists, but they do a lot of damage.
> Surely this is not what Colonel Denman won his medals for. Surely this is not the America that our best are fighting and dying for in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is something desperately wrong here, and if President Bush is searching for an issue, I might suggest this: common decency for the workers and the savers and investors of this country, and an end to the hideous breaches of trust that build great mansions in the Hamptons and wreck a free soci- ety.
> Ben Stein is a lawyer, writer, actor and economist. E-mail: ebiz@nytimes.com.

‘Airline Workers United’ Forms to Fight Concessions Industry-Wide

2006-01-04T16:22:00.000-05:00

by Chris Kutalik and Jennifer Biddle
http://labornotes.org/archives/2006/01/articles/c.shtml

Things seem to keep going from bad to worse for workers at Northwest Airlines (NWA). While striking mechanics and cleaners face a bitter winter after more than four months on the picket line, pilots, flight attendants, gate/ramp agents, baggage handlers, customer service reps, and other union workers face a fresh round of givebacks against the backdrop of a bankruptcy court.

A New York City bankruptcy court ordered NWA’s non-striking unions to accept interim concessions on November 16. Machinist union (IAM) members took 19 percent pay cuts (sending wages back to 1980s levels), hefty health care cuts (doubling deductibles up to $400 for some), layoffs, and wide-scale outsourcing.

“It’s like working at a morgue,” says Mike Ramsdell, an IAM member in Cincinnati. “The official proposal was to outsource 98 stations to subcontractors. Our station isn’t even on the list—which makes me think that our station will be cut entirely. All the small places are pretty much toast.”

NWA pilots are looking at even steeper pay cuts (23.9 percent), as are flight attendants with 20.7 percent.

But in a break from routine in this ailing industry, two small but growing campaigns—led by airline workers—are using NWA’s strike and bankruptcy debacle as a springboard for what may be the opening moves of an industry-wide fightback.

AIRLINE WORKERS UNITED

Galvanized by the mechanics’ strike at NWA, members of other NWA workgroups (flight attendants and ground workers), union members at other airlines (United and American), and other labor activists have created a new industry-focused organization: Airline Workers United (AWU).

“The way that the mechanics were hung out to dry has really hit many of us hard,” said Rebecca Johnson, a customer service rep and IAM Local 1833 member at Northwest Airlines. “I hope that not too many employees look at what has happened during the mechanic strike and lose heart.

“I hope that when they look back they see the problem was in the lack of solidarity and support from fellow unions on the property, not that employees don’t have a voice or are incapable of promoting a strong fight.”

Twenty-seven activists created AWU’s organizing committee in November to build support for an effort to unite workers from different unions, workgroups, and employers.

“Part of the reason for the effectiveness of the airlines’ divide-and-conquer strategy is the serious lack of communication and planned strategies amongst many unions—even at the same company,” said Richard Turk, Communication Officer for Airline Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) Local 9. “The coming together of activists from throughout the industry can be a large step in the right direction.”

Explaining why she joined the organizing committee, Karen Schultz, national contract action team coordinator for NWA’s flight attendants union (PFAA), said that she was interested in a “global strategy that goes beyond the boundaries of individual unions and trades.”

BUILDING A NETWORK

Beyond building unity, the group hopes to build “rank-and-file networks to make unions democratic and keep leaders accountable.” Frustrated by the sluggish and short-sighted responses of many union leaders to their industry’s crisis, AWU members—many of them local officers or former officers themselves—see this step as necessary to recovering union losses since the industry’s post-9/11 collapse.

Spread out across the country, the group has been meeting weekly by phone, has set up its own listserve, and is designing an AWU website. Plans are also being made for regional meetings and a national half-day conference as part of the May 2006 Labor Notes conference.

“At the meetings, we can talk about how to perpetually organize and the value of continually setting resources aside to do this,” says Schultz. “And we absolutely must leave with a plan for specific actions.”

“We are a little NWA-centered right now,” added Ramsdell, who helped to found AWU. “We need to expand our scope and reach out to non-union people too.

“We are going to need to find a way to reach the people that have given up. At Delta [a mostly non-union carrier] it is defeat after defeat and workers don’t want to fight.”

ON THE LINE

AMFA strikers at NWA faced an offer that AMFA leadership called “the worst contract in the history of airline labor.” Under pressure from members, however, the union’s National Executive Council put the offer to a membership vote. Members rejected the offer, which would effectively lay off the entire striking workforce at the airline, by 57 percent on December 30.

News of the offer—and the rejection--surprised strikers and supporters alike, as the union had escalated support efforts for the strike only weeks before. In November, AMFA launched the Campaign to Save Airline Jobs and Safety, with rallies in the Minneapolis and Detroit areas, two major centers of the strike.

The campaign’s opening rally in Bloomington, Minnesota on November 19 drew 700 and followed NWA’s deadline threat to force concessions through the bankruptcy court on November 16. A crowd of 400 came out for the second rally in Southgate, Michigan on December 4.

Speakers at both rallies repeatedly emphasized themes broader than the NWA strike: companies’ use of bankruptcy as a “strategy of choice” to bust unions (drawing connections between auto and steel companies and airlines); the outsourcing of aircraft maintenance overseas; the need for international solidarity between unions; and the general decline in airline safety standards.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger—while studiously avoiding mention of his own union’s woes at Delphi—spoke of his union’s support for the strike, saying, “it is courageous for workers to go on strike in the climate that exists today.”

MORE PIECES

The campaign is the brainchild of veteran labor consultant Ray Rogers. His group, Corporate Campaign, was hired by AMFA in October. Rogers says that the campaign’s strategy entails viewing the strike not as AMFA’s final move against NWA, but as “one piece of an overall campaign of leverage.”

The other pieces of the campaign center around pressuring and exposing NWA’s board of directors and the bankruptcy court. Former Michigan Governor John Engler—a NWA board member and president of the National Association of Manufacturers—and NWA CEO Doug Steenland have become particular targets.

AMFA Local 5 has planned a number of Detroit actions at places linked to both Engler and Steenland. A threatened picket of the Superbowl (Steenland sits on the regional hosting committee) has drawn considerable local media attention.

[Jen Biddle has worked for 10 years as an aircraft mechanic and has written extensively on airline unions. Chris Kutalik (chris@labornotes.org) works as co-editor of Labor Notes. For more information on both campaigns see www.labornotes.org and www.corporatecampaign.org/airlinecamp.htm. AWU can be contacted at airlineworkers@gmail.com. ]

Northwest Mechanics Reject Offer

2006-01-03T11:51:00.000-05:00

Northwest Mechanics Reject Offer
Settlement Is Turned Down
By 57% of Those Voting;
4-Month Strike Continues
By SUSAN CAREY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 31, 2005; Page A3

A majority of the Northwest Airlines mechanics who voted on a settlement agreement that would have ended a four-month strike rejected the offer, according to the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association.

The deal, rejected by 57% of those voting, would have made the strikers eligible for four weeks of severance pay and allowed them to apply for 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. Northwest made the offer in mid-December

However, Northwest has outsourced most of the strikers' jobs and now only employs 880 mechanics, including 480 AMFA members who crossed picket lines or came off furlough as replacement workers. And it imposed a new contract on that group, terms of which the strikers also rejected in the ballot results released Friday.

When the strike began Aug. 20, 4,400 people walked off the job after union negotiators rejected a proposal that would have provided as much as six months of severance pay and protected 2,750 jobs. Northwest made two subsequent offers to the union, both less attractive than the first, and AMFA negotiators declined to put them out for a membership vote.

AMFA's national executive council decided earlier this month to put the latest, least generous offer to a vote, but recommended that members reject it and the imposed contract terms for the current mechanics. Rejection means the strike will continue. The union said 2,223 people cast ballots, with 1,258 voting against the deal and 965 voting for it. Retirees, furloughed workers and those who crossed the picket lines and returned to work weren't eligible to vote.

"This is a victory for AMFA members and for unionism," said O.V. Delle-Femine, national director of the union. "Our striking members refused to bow down to Northwest's ... management and will continue the strike against this renegade, union-busting airline." AMFA also represents mechanics at UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, Alaska Air Group Inc.'s Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines and some smaller carriers.

Northwest, which filed for bankruptcy-court protection in September, has said the terms it imposed on the replacement workers, which included outsourcing the majority of its technician and aircraft-cleaner positions, are providing it with the $203 million in annual savings it was seeking from that work group. The imposed terms lowered the top pay for a veteran mechanic to $26.53 an hour, down from the mid-$30s, and made union membership and dues payment optional rather than mandatory. Technically, AMFA remains the bargaining agent for the 880 remaining mechanics.

Northwest, based in Eagan, Minn., said it was disappointed that the union declined to ratify the latest contract proposal.

The carrier remains in negotiations with its three largest unions over concessions it says it needs to successfully restructure in bankruptcy and emerge a stronger, financially viable airline. The three unions currently are providing Northwest with temporary savings and hope to reach permanent contracts before a bankruptcy judge is scheduled to hear the company's motion on Jan. 17 to annul the group's contracts so it can impose terms on the pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers and customer-service agents.

Some of Northwest's requests have angered other workers also. The Air Line Pilots Association, for instance, intends to conduct informational picketing on Wednesday at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport to display frustration with the carrier's plans to outsource all jobs on planes of 100 seats or fewer to a new subsidiary. ALPA maintains that 1,000 Northwest pilot jobs would be lost, and pledges that if the judge allows Northwest to impose new terms of employment the pilots will strike.

Northwest says its goal is to reach consensual agreements with the unions. Its aim is to lower its overall labor costs by $1.4 billion per year.

2005-12-23T21:19:00.000-05:00

I bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch

"So, dear public-
The Mechanics at Northwest are really reamed in the ass. Why? The propsal, which is up for vote, has clauses where....
1) the scabs get to stay at their job. So they are rewarded for scabbing. They may have just a few years senoirty.
2) they don't get 16 weeks of severance, they get 4.

there is more.

can you imagine working at someplace for 19 yrs and getting laid off? Your senority doesn't count and your job is replaced by those who worked a few years and scabbed, and contract workers who have 'connections'.

Just sick"

Even the Church Is Down on NWA Scabs!

2005-12-19T14:32:00.000-05:00

I bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch

2005-12-09T22:15:00.000-05:00

Welcome fellow weblogger, Kitty Stewardess Bitching Blog . Thanks for your kind words. Hats off to you and yours, we are all in this together!

Technorati tags: UnionScab

Rally December 4th

2005-11-21T14:48:00.000-05:00

We invite all to our Rally on December 4th at the Crystal Gardens in Southgate. (map)

We will have refreshments and munchies with a cash bar.

(download the pdf flier here)

Site redesign

2005-11-14T02:16:00.000-05:00

Hello Folks,

Please comment about things that have changed, especially if you liked it another way. Especially take a look at the section on the right titled Social Software.

In that category are free online tools that people can access to publish their own material. I think this is especially useful in letting people know our side of the story.

Let me know if there are any questions about any of the tools. I feel like they are pretty self explainatory, but I have been using them for a while, so I am probably jumping over someones head!

Please ask any questions.

Halloween Picket

2005-10-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

HALLOWEEN PICKET!!!

THIS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29TH

10 AM TO 2 PM

DRESS UP AS YOUR FAVORITE SCARY SCAB,

GREEDY OGRE CEO, OR OVERWORKED CRANKY MANAGER

COSTUME CONTEST AND PRIZES FOR THE KIDS

VANS FROM UAW LOCAL 174 (STAGING AREA)

VAN BORN RD. WILL PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION TO THE TERMINAL PICKET AREA

October 23 Strike Support Action

2005-10-19T10:18:00.000-04:00

There will be a mass action and spaghetti dinner October 23 in support of the striking Northwest Airlines mechanics and cleaners. Dress for the weather and fill your tank!

Sunday, October 23, 1 pm
UAW Local 174 hall
29841 Van Born Rd
(between Merriman and Middlebelt near the DTW airport)

This action is being organized by Frequent Fliers United, Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice, ACOSS, and allied groups.

Lessons of the Neptune Jade

2005-10-18T12:08:00.000-04:00

Both of the following pieces are courtesy of Waypoints, the newsletter of AMFA Local 9.

Lessons of the Neptune Jade

By Brian McKeever

have recently returned from a trip to England where labor representatives from around the world gathered to remember a loss—a loss of solidarity.

Five hundred Liverpool dockworkers lost their jobs to scabs in September 1995 while the established labor movement in England failed to support them until it was too late. Strikingly similar to the U.S. PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers) strike in 1981, the dockworkers never returned to their jobs. Those who replaced them work to this day at dramatically reduced pay and benefits.

World-wide labor conference

Labor leaders from the United States, Canada, Spain, Portugal, England, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Australia and Denmark gathered in Liverpool to not only mark the anniversary of the strike but also to renew a commitment to never again let this happen. Labor leaders from around the world spoke and addressed the systematic destruction of peoples’ rights in their work place, homes, and lives.

The dockworkers’ slogan, “Dockers will never walk alone again” recognizes the failure of the labor community to support their strike

AMFA was invited as a guest of the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union). I addressed the gathering, spoke about the Northwest Airlines strike and solicited support from the delegates. We distributed literature, strike pins, and bumper stickers and gathered letters of support from union representatives.

NWA strike support lags

The Northwest Strike, now in its 40^th day, has been arduous and challenging—both in time and logistics. Despite this fact, more than 50% of the local NWA mechanics continue to picket without pay, back pay, vacation pay and an unemployment check.

We at UAL and our other represented members seem to lack the commitment to fight, a fight that is also rightly ours. We allow our brothers and sisters to suffer this indignity alone, save for a few of us.

There seems little risk on our part, so maybe there is little to gain.

But you would be wrong to believe this, as you will have this attack on your union brought to your family’s door in the not so distant future.

Workers at UAL and other carriers, who have joined NW mechanics on the picket line, understand the intense industry-wide campaign to destroy represented labor. Employees should know that the outcome of the Northwest strike will impact every worker in the industry, and beyond. There is too much at stake.

NWA and dockworkers strike similarity chilling

The similarity between the Liverpool dockworkers strike with the current Northwest Airlines strike is chilling. The leadership of the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, IAM, TWU, AFA, and ALPA has chosen not to support this strike. Corporate America and the federal government hoped for this division and while the rank-and-file members of these unions sympathize with the strike, their leaders do not. This is union busting, pure and simple.

Why? Forty percent of the airline industry in the United States is unionized, a strong-hold of labor. Corporate America and their political henchmen cannot tolerate this. How can we respond to this injustice? The answer is solidarity; solidarity among workers can change the world. We have strength in numbers, but our numbers are divided. Employers pit us against each other on many levels. Our lack of action in solidarity enables corporate America to destroy social values and the very fabric of our society.

Liverpool dockers lead the way

The people I met in Liverpool would only make you smile. They believe that an international work force bound by a common cause can stand up against any employer or corporation, no matter where in the world they claim their headquarters.

Corporate globalization, code-sharing, privatization of government agencies for profit, reduction of health care and pension destruction all undermine our way of life. Faced with this enormous challenge, we can take comfort that we are not alone in this attack on our jobs and families. Workers from all around the world are coming together to resolve serious problems and map out a strategy.

The story of the Liverpool Dockers strike provides an inspiring example of how solidarity by small groups, even widely separated by geography, can be very powerful force.

The Neptune Jade odyssey

In September 1997, two years into the strike, scabs in Liverpool loaded cargo onto a ship called the Neptune Jade. The ILWU in Oakland received communication that the Neptune Jade was headed to the port of Oakland. When the ship arrived in Oakland the ILWU set up a picket line. Workers refused to cross the picket line and the ship could not be unloaded. The port was shut down for four days.

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure a court order to stop the picketers, the ship owners sued the picketers. Undeterred, the picketers maintained the line. The ship owners then attempted to trick the picketers by giving the appearance of sailing the ship to the next port, but the picketers were not fooled, stood their ground and maintained the picket line. The ship eventually sailed to Vancouver, Canada only to find a picket line there too. No one crossed that picket line either.

After only a few hours the owners ordered the ship to Yokohama, Japan. Japanese dockworkers set up a picket line and prevented the cargo from landing on their docks. The ship moved on to Kobe, Japan only to be met once again by the resolve of the workers. It is not clear where the Neptune Jade finally unloaded, but you can bet it didn’t happen at an organized dock.

These workers adopted a new motto: “The world is our picket line”

The Mersey Company (the Liverpool dock employer that fired the union dockworkers) finally settled with the Liverpool 500 workers in 1998 after the company’s lawsuit against the workers failed. The settlement provided a severance package for a majority of the fired workers but allowed the scabs to continue in their jobs.

Lessons from Liverpool

The lessons learned by the Liverpool dockworkers are important for us to absorb. Those workers demonstrated the crucial importance of dependable alliances within the labor movement.

Their slogan, “Dockers will never walk alone again” recognizes the failure of the labor community to support their strike. They commit themselves to never again allow this to happen. This slogan recognizes that the heart of any effective labor movement must be a solid and strong trust forged between all members of all unions. To honor and join the picket line exhibits concrete proof of that trust. We either apply these lessons or face our corporate adversaries unprepared.

Brian McKeever, AMFA Local 9 Vice-President

Early lessons of the NWA strike

2005-10-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Early lessons of the NWA strike

By Joseph Prisco

he following article is based on a speech I delivered to a meeting held at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 6 hall in Oakland. This September 3 meeting focused on the issue of solidarity and the labor movement.

We are learning some important lessons from the ongoing strike at Northwest Airlines. These lessons will aid us today and tomorrow as UAL exits from Chapter 11 bankruptcy early next year.

A labor organization’s promotion to cross picket lines constitutes pure treason to the labor movement, nothing less.

One immediate lesson is the need for allies. It is crucial that we prepare now for the amendable date of the UAL Mechanics agreement in 2010. We must learn how to better build coalitions and alliances with others who are also under attack. They are our natural allies and future friends.

Honor the picket

Any discussion around problems in “the labor movement” needs to start at what I now see is a primary principle—honoring pickets.

Any discussion of solidarity, if it does not honor pickets as a given, is a discussion doomed to waste our collective time, talent and energies.

It is my considered opinion that we must narrow our focus to a basic solidarity statement. Any broader discussion of problematic issues compromises, confuses and prevents a coordinated response to employer attacks on working class interests.

When any labor organization decides to strike or hold a job action, and other organizations decide, for whatever reason, to cross the picket lines and continue to work, there can be no “solidarity.” A labor organization’s promotion to cross picket lines constitutes pure treason to the labor movement, nothing less.

Sound confusing? You bet. If those of us in the labor movement, whether affiliated with the Change-To-Win Coalition or the AFL-CIO, don’t “get it,” then how can we expect those that are not in any organization to understand why should “they” join “us”?

Collective understanding

There are always problems, always have been, always will be. Collective response to problems requires first and foremost a collective understanding of the definition of a particular problem. Political stands and jurisdictional disputes hamper this understanding.

We must also examine political alignment or ideological orientation within this context. For now, let’s just look at the issue of jurisdiction.

When organizations insist they have “jurisdiction” over a group of workers and seek to force that jurisdiction, they block understanding on other issues. Individuals deserve the freedom to collectively select their association with any organization. Democracy builds on this basic principle.

Any labor group must hold honoring a picket as its first duty and first obligation to the greater whole without regard to the association of the picketers.

At Northwest Airlines, the fight is a plain and simple one—wages, working conditions and pensions. They are bread and butter issues--old time labor union issues. Yet still, after over 40 days of a strike in defense of these time-tested “labor issues,” many so called organized labor “houses” refuse to act. They refuse to honor or support picket lines with substantive actions!

As Samuel Gompers, an early leader of the American Federation of Labor stated a century ago, “It is all very well that the assemblies pass resolutions of sympathy, but sympathy without relief is like mustard without beef.”

So, how is it that we can have this disconnect on a simple issue of honoring a strike’s picket line, yet try to have a broader discussion on more complicated issues of interest to labor as a whole?

To be frank, even many within AMFA at other airlines are not fully engaged. In small part, it is due to being in survival mode rather than simply being apathetic. It’s because of years of non-engagement due to lack of understanding of labor’s role. This lack of understanding is institutional in many cases and is not the fault of individual members.

What to learn

We all should make the primacy of the picket line as our first goal to rebuild a more responsive labor movement. Without agreement on the weapon of last resort, all other talk of organizing solidarity rings hollow.

“No airline worker should ever have to walk alone” is one way to manifest the goal of solidarity. But in a truly greater sense, “No Union should ever walk alone,” regardless of the industry, should be our ultimate goal.

I would encourage you to learn labor history. We must pay particular attention to the effectiveness of coordinated actions on the strike lines. You must see for yourselves that without true solidarity of action, nothing else is possible within our vision of organized labor.

What I encourage all of you to do is find out more about your particular industries and how they evolved. Attempting to go forward without knowing how you got to where you are today will hinder an understanding of how to march ahead.

What I learned in helping our Northwest Airline members organize around this strike is that we were unprepared at UAL. However, we can apply the lessons of today to plan for the future. Our contract is up for negotiations again in 2009. It is not far off.

Going forward

Three years of Chapter 11, two rounds of 1113 negotiations and concessions at UAL have made all of us aware of the instability of the aviation industry and precarious state of our future at United Airlines.

But keep in mind this final point. We must educate ourselves and help educate others to take on new challenges. Labor deserves it. You deserve it, and we all need it. Our collective futures as workers depend on knowing our history, the history of other powerful struggles and making proper planning and organization our first priority.

Joseph Prisco, President AMFA Local 9

UM Students Say Don't Fly Northwest

2005-10-12T17:00:00.000-04:00

Detroit NWA strike supporters have started a campaign to encourage students not to fly Northwest this Thanksgiving. Below is an editorial and a viewpoint from the University of Michigan's daily paper.

Opinion : Editorials

From the Daily: Rolling dice at 35,000 feet

Students should avoid Northwest AirlinesStudents should avoid Northwest AirlinesRolling dice at 35,000 feet

October 11, 2005

Flyers have few choices when it comes to leaving Detroit. For most travelers, Northwest Airlines provides the most convenient flights, and often the only direct flights, to final destinations. Unfortunately, as students approach fall break — a fou- day window to visit home or other schools — Northwest is grappling with a labor dispute. In light of this strike, students should avoid Northwest this weekend — not merely out of respect for the mechanics’ union, but also because flying the airline may truly be unsafe.

The airline’s mechanics, represented by the American Mechanics Fraternal Association, have been striking since late August, protesting cost-cutting measures that would dramatically downsize the airline’s team of mechanics and slash pay for those who remain. Since then, Northwest has been flying with the help of replacement mechanics — scabs hired for the sole purpose of surviving the strike and breaking the AMFA.

The current Northwest strike is the first major labor incident to affect the industry since Northwest’s pilot strike during the late 1990s. That strike, which grounded Northwest, was enlightening for the company’s executives; this time, the airline spent $100 million dollars and more than a year preparing for a mechanics strike. More than 1,000 scab mechanics were hired — at wages significantly below what Northwest mechanics were earning — to step up in the event of a strike. Thus, when the AMFA local went on strike almost seven weeks ago, Northwest took the stoppage in stride — it vowed to maintain Federal Aviation Administration safety standards while keeping scheduled flights in the air and on time.

Yet, despite what Northwest claims, the airline’s performance has been suffering. The FAA found that Northwest was the second tardiest airline last month — after a small, regional charter carrier. More importantly, the airline’s safety record is slipping. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported on FAA reports that detailed glaring deficiencies in Northwest’s maintenance procedures. In one alleged incident, a Northwest DC-9 was cleared by mechanics and prepared to depart Minneapolis for Memphis when the copilot noticed a dead bird in one of the aircraft’s engines. At New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, an FAA inspector documented mechanics — and Northwest supervisors — incorrectly inspect and repair an engine blade. The paper, which received over 100 FAA reports, could not contact the airline for comment.

While labor analysts have declared the AMFA strike an abject failure — Northwest has continued to fly, while simultaneously slashing almost 2,500 mechanics’ jobs — the airline has only managed to do so by cutting critical corners. While it has managed to trim labor costs, it has also decided to gamble with passengers’ safety. As they head home for fall break, students should avoid the airline wherever possible. While other airlines may be less convenient, students must answer a personal question: How much is a flight in a safe, well-maintained aircraft worth?

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Viewpoint: Don’t fly Northwest Airlines

By Andres Ramos

October 12, 2005

For the past seven weeks, Northwest Airlines has been doing its level best to break the spirit of its mechanics, as well as the mechanics union. The airline’s demands of pay cuts between 25 and 50 percent have forced the Northwest mechanics to strike for the past seven weeks, shifting their willing and skilled hands from the tools of their trade to, in defense of their livelihood, picket signs. This reprehensible action by Northwest Airlines is not only unjust, but also a threat to the safety of the students who must fly this fall.

Northwest is striving for a nonunion business model similar to JetBlue, and in order to achieve this goal, it is demanding the layoff of more than half its maintenance workforce — leaving almost 5,000 maintenance workers no choice but to go on strike. Northwest Airlines is trying to slash labor costs in an attempt to increase profits, all at the expense of the dedicated maintenance workers and their families. The strikers are fighting a massive pay cut, layoffs for more than half the unit’s workforce, reduced sick pay, reduced vacation and holidays, increased health care costs, pension freezes and increased outsourcing to nonunion shops. The union has even agreed to a 16-percent pay cut, which management refuses to accept. Who has ever heard of workers going on strike for a pay cut?

Although Northwest cancelled 25 percent of its flights on the first day of the strike, the Airline Mechanics Fraternal Association, which represents the mechanics, has a long journey ahead. Northwest Airlines spent more than $100 million on preparations for the strike, 16 months ahead of time, even though it is demanding $176 million from the union. This crisis has clearly been manufactured in an attempt to break the union. Due to the post-Sept. 11 state of the airline industry, all airline unions alike have suffered from cuts in wages, benefits, pensions, etc. Northwest, in particular, has outsourced most of its maintenance crew — it brought in about 1,400 scabs to complete maintenance work immediately after the strike began.

The replacement of dedicated and well-trained maintenance workers is not only unethical but dangerous. Northwest has hired replacement workers — scabs — who do not all have airline mechanic certifications. Unlike airline mechanics, these new scabs are not required to take tests for drug and alcohol use and — because they have only rudimentary training — are not even legally permitted to certify their own maintenance work. Does this seem like a problem to you? Would you board a plane knowing that the men in control of your safety may not even be qualified? I wouldn’t. Additionally, in the wake of Northwest’s dangerous decision, there have been reported incidents where Northwest flights have made emergency landings due to mechanical problems. The use of nonunion, uncertified labor for airline maintenance has drastically reduced passenger safety.

Many University students must rely on commercial airlines to go home for the holidays and for special occasions. Many of us are frequent flyers, and we want to be safe. In light of our concerns for passenger safety and the struggle of the workers at Northwest Airlines, the Michigan Student Assembly’s Peace and Justice Commission urges students not to fly Northwest Airlines.

Ramos is an LSA sophomore and member of the Peace and Justice Commission of the Michigan Student Assembly. His opinion reflects the official position of the commission.

NWA Moves to Open All Its Contracts

2005-10-12T15:27:00.000-04:00

Northwest asks court to dump labor contracts
from Duluth News Tribune

Bankrupt Northwest Airlines filed a motion with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court this morning asking it to reject existing labor agreements if the company is unsuccessful in reaching new contract terms through collective bargaining.

``Our primary labor cost reduction goal remains reaching consensual agreements with all of our unions. Our Section 1113(c) filing today serves as a backstop in the event these negotiations do not provide the labor cost structure we require in the time frame necessary,'' Doug Steenland, president and CEO, said in a morning news release. ``We must quickly reduce our labor costs by $1.4 billion annually. Our court motion gives union leaders and Northwest management time to reach the necessary agreements before the court would be compelled to intervene and impose new contracts.''

Northwest Airlines is seeking $2.5 billion in overall savings.

``With jet fuel at record high levels and most of our competitors operating with a much lower cost structure than Northwest, the airline must move quickly to achieve these results,'' Steenland said in the prepared statement.

Cost-saving goals include:

• $285 million in annual savings the airline realized from its pilots and salaried and management employees starting in December 2004.

• Approximately $200 million in annual savings from restructuring Northwest's maintenance organization after the strike by Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association.

• Northwest's salaried and management employees will take a second round of pay and benefits reductions in the near future. Steenland also said debt holders must lend a hand.

``The company's debt holders will need to shoulder their fair share of the sacrifices necessary to restructure Northwest,'' he said.

The airline expects its first quarter 2006 system capacity to decline 11 percent to 13 percent from the same period in 2005. Over time, the Northwest mainline flight schedule could be reduced by as much as 15 percent or more.

Serious concerns about the safety of NWA

2005-10-06T16:51:00.000-04:00

FAA inspectors raise questions at Northwest

Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe

Star Tribune

Published October 2, 2005

On the first day Northwest Airlines began using replacement workers for its striking mechanics, the carrier's chief executive stressed that it was business as usual at the nation's fourth largest airline.

"Our operation is running smoothly," CEO Doug Steenland said.

Now, the Star Tribune has obtained reports filed by federal aviation inspectors during the first month of the strike that belie the orderly sense of calm that Steenland and other Northwest executives have sought to convey. The documents, reviewed by two independent aviation experts, describe training deficiencies among the replacement workers, thin staffing, maintenance blunders and mistakes in recording aircraft repairs -- a crucial safety discipline in the airline industry.

In one instance, mechanics failed to spot a dead bird in the engine of a plane about to leave Memphis, but a co-pilot saw it before takeoff. In another, inspectors watched replacement workers toil through the night to replace a brake -- a job that usually takes experienced mechanics less than three hours, according to experts consulted by the Star Tribune.

In the weeks leading up to the strike, Northwest took pains to assure travelers that its replacement workers were fully licensed and trained, and that safety would not be compromised.

Northwest declined to discuss the substance of more than 100 reports compiled by Federal Aviation Administration inspectors. In a statement last week, the airline said it "remains confident in the quality of its maintenance program."

Northwest acknowledged that it has conducted "refresher training" for replacement workers since the strike began to ensure proper documentation of aircraft maintenance. The training, now complete, was initiated after the FAA's top inspection manager at Northwest discussed post-strike problems in record-keeping with the airline, said FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory.

Cory said the agency does not publicly express opinions on how well individual airlines are complying with federal regulations. She also noted that many of the FAA inspection reports from the first four weeks of the strike found no faults, while others that did were promptly corrected by Northwest. A few are still under investigation.

She also said the FAA is "seeing great improvement in the logbook area" since replacement workers have gone for retraining. Regarding staffing levels, Cory said Northwest was operating in compliance with federal regulations.

Extra scrutiny

Northwest's maintenance procedures have been under extra scrutiny since mechanics walked off the job Aug. 19 and the airline turned to 1,200 replacement workers and a few hundred managers to maintain and repair its planes. The heightened surveillance is customary during labor disputes.

In this case, the FAA increased the number of personnel assigned to the airline from 53 to upward of 80. With more inspectors, the FAA is able to increase its normal spot checks and write more reports, but it still cannot monitor all activities at a carrier that operates 1,400 daily flights.

With Northwest under extraordinary federal scrutiny, and with hundreds of inspection reports since the strike still under wraps, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions about safety at the airline from the sample of FAA reports reviewed by the Star Tribune. None of the reports reviewed revealed any maintenance problems while planes were in flight.

What the reports do provide is the first independent glimpse into the airline's maintenance operations as replacement mechanics and their managers worked to keep Northwest flying.

One report described an FAA inspector at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York who observed a team of Northwest managers and replacement mechanics incorrectly inspect and incorrectly repair an engine blade tip, a critical rotating component.

The inspector said in his Aug. 27 report that Northwest decided to fly the plane even after he informed the maintenance team of possible violations of federal safety regulations "because the blade was scheduled for removal within the next 50 flight hours."

An FAA spokeswoman said the agency continues to investigate that incident.

Four days later at a Northwest hub in Memphis, an FAA inspector reported that a replacement mechanic failed to see a dead bird in the right engine of a DC-9 jetliner during the mechanic's inspection of the aircraft. It was spotted at the last minute in a pre-flight inspection by the co-pilot, the report said. The discovery was important because, on impact, a bird could damage engine components.

In Philadelphia, a day after the strike began, an FAA inspector watched four replacement mechanics "fresh out of A&P (airframe and powerplant) school" spend all night trying to change a plane's brake under the guidance of one experienced mechanic.

At the Jackson, Miss., airport on Aug. 24, a Northwest pilot told an FAA inspector about two "frustrating" experiences with newly trained tug drivers, including one that nearly resulted in an on-the-ground collision near the gate area.

"The captain was very alarmed about the training and abilities of the tug operator," the report added.

Two weeks ago in Indianapolis, an FAA inspector reported that a Northwest replacement worker who had just completed training in Tucson, Ariz., did not know how to look up a part on the airline's computer system.

The Star Tribune obtained the FAA documents, along with dozens of Northwest's internal aircraft maintenance logs, and had them reviewed last week by former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member John Goglia and by John Krawczyk, a former mechanic and maintenance inspector for United Airlines. Krawczyk has no ties to Northwest or its mechanics' union.

Krawczyk, who has 20 years of airline maintenance experience, said the mistakes documented in the reports expose the public to danger.

He questioned, for example, an Aug. 30 entry in the carrier's maintenance logs that indicated a replacement worker added seven quarts of oil to an engine without checking for leaks or seeking another explanation for abnormal oil loss. "Seven quarts should have raised a red-flag -- it's beyond limits, you have to find the source of the leak," Krawczyk said.

Northwest spokesman Bill Mellon said the mechanic followed NWA procedures. The airline was aware of the problem before it was noted in the Aug. 30 maintenance log and had a plan to fix it, Mellon said. A bad oil seal in the engine was replaced the next day, he said.

But Goglia said no plan for deferred maintenance on the engine should have excused the mechanic on Aug. 30 from checking for an oil leak. He said the engine could have developed a second problem.

Goglia, a licensed airframe and powerplant mechanic who is now a professor of aviation science at St. Louis University, said he saw evidence of training deficiencies and documentation errors throughout the FAA inspection reports and maintenance logs he reviewed.

In Los Angeles on Sept. 1, an FAA inspector discovered that there was no documentation on board a Northwest 747 to indicate that the plane's rain-repellent system was deactivated. Mechanics should have noted the deficiency on a placard but did not.

"Nor was there any entry in the aircraft maintenance log book reflecting the current status of the system," the report said.

Goglia said pilots would not have discovered the absence of a rain-repellent system until they needed to use it, a scenario especially unwanted during a landing in inclement weather. The repellent system sprays fluid onto a plane's windshield. Without it, wipers are required.

"If the paperwork is not right, you will start to skew the system that is meant to keep you out of trouble -- real trouble," Goglia said.

Inspector reassigned

The FAA inspector reports obtained by the Star Tribune were not the first to raise questions about safety issues at Northwest in the days after the strike began.

Three days after it started, an FAA inspector in the Twin Cities wrote a confidential memo about safety problems he observed.

"FAA safety inspectors have and continue to observe employee and vendor employee errors in the accomplishment of aircraft maintenance, inspection and servicing tasks," the inspector, Mark Lund of Cannon Falls, Minn., wrote.

Lund, who did not return calls from the Star Tribune, shared his safety memo with Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who in turn initiated a now on-going investigation into Northwest's operations by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), which oversees the FAA.

Northwest complained to the FAA about Lund, alleging unprofessional behavior, and he was reassigned to desk duty.

Lund's memo highlighted 10 concerns. They range from a Northwest maintenance manager not complying with an engine run checklist to five replacement workers who were not aware how pressure-release indicators operated on a wing fuel tank.

In another case, a Northwest manager in Minneapolis told the FAA there was no reason why a DC-10 arriving from Amsterdam could not continue on to Honolulu even though a broken lavatory duct had allowed human waste to spill into the plane's electrical equipment bay. "FAA stepped in and ensured aircraft was clean and checked out before a next flight," Lund wrote.

Linda Goodrich, an official with the union that represents FAA inspectors, said Thursday that Lund has been cleared by the FAA to return to inspections at Northwest but only after he reads a passage from a federal code of conduct and ethics.

Jim Gelbmann, state director of Dayton's Minnesota office, said Thursday that a second FAA inspector has come forward to voice concerns about Northwest's operations to him. He said that inspector also agreed to provide information to the OIG.

OIG spokesman David Barnes said Friday that auditors and investigators continue to probe the actions of FAA and Northwest. A review of the FAA investigator reports is part of that investigation, Barnes said.

Leaders for the union that represents the airline's 4,200 striking mechanics say the FAA reports bear out what they've argued all along, that Northwest's reliance on replacement mechanics has put the public at risk.

"These records provide examples that are even worse than we imagined," said John Glynn, maintenance standards coordinator for the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA).

Picket Scab Buses in Ann Arbor

2005-10-01T14:21:00.000-04:00

AMFA Local 5 is planning a double picket next week in Ann Arbor with the S.O.L.E. group from U of M (a student labor support group).

Monday we will be picketing Getaway Tours and Charters bus company (they are transporting the SCABS from the Dearborn Hyatt to the airport). Tuesday we will be picketing NWA VP Andrea Newman Fisher's apartment, who also happens to be a U of M Regent. Both days we will be there from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Detroit area folks can meet up with strikers at UAW local 174 (Romulus) around 1:00 pm.

The address for Getaway Tours and Charters (Mon. Picket) is 2310 S. Industrial Hwy. Ann Arbor.
Andrea Newman Fisher's (NWA VP) address is 101 N. Main St. Ann Arbor (Tues. Picket)

Northwest Pushes ‘Permanent Solution’ to Union Problem

2005-10-01T14:14:00.000-04:00

http://labornotes.org/archives/2005/10/articles/b.shtml

Northwest Pushes ‘Permanent Solution’ to Union Problem

by Chris Kutalik

October 2005

The battle being waged atNorthwest Airlines (NWA) by the independent Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) and its supporters rolls on into its second month. Northwest’s management has increased the pressure on the 4,400 strikers, pushing demands further and further as the weeks progress, towards what a company spokesperson called “a permanent solution for that segment of the workforce.”

Talks broke down September 11 after NWA pushed a proposal that AMFA Local 5 member Curt Booza characterized as an attempt “to completely eliminate us from the property.”

NWA began moves to permanently replace strikers September 13. Shifting from its original proposal to cut over half of its 4,400 AMFA jobs (including all of the lower-paid cleaner jobs that employ a greater percentage of women and people of color), in mid-September NWA demanded a 75 percent job reduction.

Though AMFA negotiators appeared ready to accept large-scale job cuts, NWA refused to entertain the union’s insistence on 20-weeks of severance pay for terminated workers. This refusal left negotiations at a stalemate, and workers remained on the lines.

Highlighting fears that larger givebacks would spread beyond the mechanics union, AMFA negotiator Jeff Mathews observed that NWA had raised its overall goal for wage and benefit concessions from all its unions from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion.

According to Mathews, “Some groups, including the IAM, may be asked to shoulder a disproportionately larger share of the new target amount.” He added, “The company is intent on…keeping the heel of its boot on each of our throats.”

Despite mounting pressure, the strikers’ morale remains high. A month into the strike, only 10 AMFA members have crossed the lines. In places where AMFA locals are active and cross-union support is organized, rallies, fundraisers, and other actions have kept spirits relatively up.

HEARTS AND MINDS

In other unions, sharp divisions have developed over the strike, pitting irate rank and filers and local officers against International leaders who have either refused to endorse or actively undermined strike support efforts. Cross-union solidarity efforts in Detroit, Minneapolis, and San Francisco have run into such resistance.

Indeed, in the lead-up to the strike deadline, local labor bodies were explicitly ordered by the AFL-CIO not to participate in any efforts to assist strikers. In an August 15 memo, AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department Director Rick Bank ordered state federations and central labor councils not to organize or support boycotts, food banks, relief funds, turnout at AMFA picket lines, or rallies without the permission of the national AFL-CIO.

Local bodies were further told that they “have no power or authority to instruct affiliates to honor picket lines.” All requests to honor pickets were to be referred to the two AFL-CIO unions still working at NWA: the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and the Machinists union (IAM).

Alarmed by what they see as a potential major defeat for the labor movement, many unionists have been backing the strike despite the ban. While some hold criticisms of AMFA as a craft-oriented union with a history of decertification battles with AFL-CIO unions, many of these critics also maintain that the stakes are high enough to warrant throwing support behind the strikers.

LESSONS FROM 1981: PATCO

They point to the use of permanent replacements (which haven’t been seen in airlines since the 1989 Eastern Airlines strike), the deteriorating situation for all airline unions since 9/11, and the recent AFL-CIO split as reasons to support the strike.

“If we don’t [get behind the strikers], it shows that we haven’t learned a lesson from PATCO and on,” said Al Benchich, president of UAW Local 909 and co-chair of Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice. “If we don’t stand together, we’re going to fall as individuals.”

In a boost for the strikers, the UAW International donated $880,000 from its strike fund. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, “Northwest Airlines’ behavior toward AMFA is blatant union-busting and an insult to every American worker. The UAW is proud to offer this support to AMFA members.”

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Aircraft Engineers International, the Professional Airways Systems Specialists (the union that represents FAA inspectors), the newly-formed Minnesota Change to Win Coalition (state affiliates of SEIU, Teamsters, UFCW, UNITE HERE, Laborers, and the Carpenters), four central labor councils (in Michigan, California, and Oregon), and a number of UAW locals have announced support for the strikers.

Additionally, UNITE HERE and Steelworkers District 2 have stopped flying Northwest.

In 1981, labor leaders were reluctant to support the PATCO strike. PATCO’s defeat was a major setback for all of organized labor. But again, labor leaders are putting their narrow organizational issues ahead of the big picture. Photo: Jim West

LOCAL EFFORTS

In a few cities, union and community members organized strike support on short order.

In Detroit — a Northwest hub — activists from the 1990s Detroit newspaper strike, Jobs with Justice, UAW, IBEW, Newspaper Guild (CWA), and Labor Notes joined with AMFA Local 5 members to organize an August 27 “ox roast” (a traditional fundraiser in which strikers’ families and strike supporters are fed while funds are raised) at IBEW Local 58’s hall.

IBEW International leaders intervened the day before the fundraiser, demanding that the local lock its doors for the weekend. Organizers scrambled to reschedule, moving the event to two local bars that had been used as support bases during the newspaper strike. Despite IBEW’s interference, over 150 local activists attended and $3,900 was raised.

Strikers also took their message to Labor Day events. UAW Region 1-A invited hundreds of AMFA Local 5 members and their families to march in its contingent in Detroit’s Labor Day parade. Marching UAW, AFSCME, SEIU, NALC, APWU, and CWA members gave a warm response to strike supporters handing out leaflets and collecting money around a sound truck parked on the parade route.

Nearly 200 rallied in a symbolic picket at a local casino near the parade’s end, with signs saying, “Don’t Gamble with NWA.” AMFA Local 5 President Bob Rose called the Labor Day action “a shot in the arm.”

BROADENING OUT

Besides building outside support, strikers have been trying to broaden out their fight from the well-controlled airport picket lines.

A group of 20 Local 5 members drove to the CSX rail yard in Toledo and set up pickets on September 6. Ninety-five percent of the yard’s Detroit-bound freight traffic was snarled at this chokepoint after Teamster engineers and rail workers refused to cross the picket.

Teamsters only returned to work after CSX won a court order on September 8 that mandated that they cross the lines.

AMFA members will travel to the Jobs with Justice conference and the Change to Win convention in St. Louis at the end of September to network and rally labor activists and leaders to their cause.

WILD CARDS

Although NWA has consistently claimed that the strike has not affected its operations, the airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (along with another major carrier, Delta) on September 14. Rising fuel costs (spiked by Hurricane Katrina) and the effects of the strike (sliding on-time flight performance, declining ticket revenues, and the $101 million price tag for NWA’s union-busting strategy) led to losses estimated at $350-400 million in the third quarter.

Bankruptcy is a wild card for the strikers. US Air and United were able to use bankruptcy courts to force open contracts and extract hundreds of millions of dollars in concessions. AMFA leaders, however, see little to lose in the courts.

With the bankruptcy, strikers see the potential for a larger fight that would pull in other unions as NWA pushes even harder for concessions. If one or more of the unions representing flight attendants, pilots, or ramp and gate agents are drawn in, there is the chance that they may end up on the picket lines themselves. A broader strike involving flight crews could raise pressure on the company by grounding many of its flights.

Commenting on the need for urgent action, the Airline Workers News Service wrote: “Union members at Northwest are facing their own version of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, we are all below sea level. Time is running out… If union members in the [Professional Flight Attendant Association] and IAM do not act soon to aid mechanics, cleaners and custodians, Northwest will simply dictate terms and destroy unions, contracts, and livelihoods.”

The question is: will these unions act and will it be enough?

NWA proposes bigger concessions for other unions

2005-09-29T17:43:00.000-04:00

Northwest Seeks More Concessions
By SUSAN CAREY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 29, 2005

Less than two weeks after filing for bankruptcy-court protection, Northwest Airlines warned three unions that it needs larger concessions from them quickly. The carrier threatened to ask a judge to reject its current contract with one union so the airline could impose terms. T

he International Association of Machinists union, which represents 14,300 clerical, customer-service and ramp workers, posted the airline's cost-saving proposals on its Web site, along with a letter from Northwest's vice president of labor relations. The airline now wants $190 million in annual savings from that group, up from $107 million it was seeking before filing for Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York on Sept. 14.

The Professional Flight Attendants Association, which represents 9,200 Northwest attendants, said earlier this week that Northwest is seeking $195 million in annual savings, up from $143 million before the filing. The airline won't confirm those numbers. Northwest also intends to furlough 1,400 attendants by January as it shrinks capacity.

The Air Line Pilots Association also received a demand for even greater concessions from Northwest this week, a union spokesman said. He said he wouldn't disclose the number until it is made available to the 5,100 pilots. The pilots agreed last year to $265 million in givebacks for two years, and Northwest in March said it would need $322 million a year more. That number is now higher still. Northwest already said it plans to furlough 400 pilots by early next year, adding to the 500 currently laid off.

The nation's fourth-largest airline by traffic said one reason it sought protection from creditors is that its costs aren't competitive with those of other big airlines that already have restructured in or near bankruptcy-court protection, or with those of discount carriers. Delta Air Lines filed for bankruptcy-court protection the same day and plans to cut its remaining work force by 9,000 workers, or 17%.

Northwest, of Eagan, Minn., had been seeking $1.1 billion in overall annual savings from employees, but that figure now is $1.4 billion and may go higher. It is unclear which combination of changes -- layoffs, outsourcing, pay and benefit cuts, tighter work rules -- would yield the savings Northwest seeks.

Because its 4,400 mechanics and aircraft cleaners struck last month, Northwest was able to impose new terms on replacement workers it has been using to care for its fleet, thus achieving the $203 million in savings it wanted from that group. Some of the savings are coming from outsourcing more maintenance work to outside vendors and subcontracting aircraft cleaning. Top mechanic pay also has fallen to $26.53 an hour from $36.39 before the strike."

UAW Donates $880,000 to NWA Strike

2005-09-13T10:06:00.000-04:00

DETROIT, Mich., September 13, 2005 – The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has donated $880,000 as a sign of solidarity to assist Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) members who are currently striking against Northwest Airlines, AMFA announced today.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said, "Northwest Airlines' behavior toward AMFA is blatant union-busting and an insult to every American worker. The UAW is proud to offer this support to AMFA members."

According to Bob Rose, president of AMFA Local 5 in Detroit, "This money will be distributed out of Local 5 to every striking AMFA member nationwide. We sincerely thank Ron Gettelfinger and all UAW members for this generous expression of solidarity. We at AMFA have been pleased by the growing financial support we are receiving from other unions."

Teamster Members Respect AMFA Rail Picket

2005-09-08T13:41:00.000-04:00

In their third week of striking Northwest Airlines, union mechanics and plane cleaners took their message to Toledo, where their picket line outside a rail yard halted traffic.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, part of the Teamsters, honored the mechanics' picket line outside a rail yard where cars carrying coal and automotive supplies for CSX Transportation Inc. are dispersed across the country. Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX maintains significant operations in metro Detroit.

About 20 mechanics on Tuesday traveled to the Toledo rail yard to get the federal government to notice Northwest strikers.

CSX declined to comment on the picket line's impact on its operations. But the company is looking into legal options, including requesting a temporary retraining order, CSX spokesman Gary Sease said.

But the move Tuesday afternoon kept train cars from departing the rail yard, said Rob Bloedow, local chairman of the Brotherhood of Local Engineers and Trainmen, Division 937.

"If we can't get trains out of Toledo, they're not going to be able to get trains into Toledo. So this will ultimately have a ripple effect," Bloedow said. "The BLET is not on strike. This is not our action. But our members will not cross an active picket line."

Labor Day Detroit Style

2005-09-06T09:31:00.000-04:00

The Labor Day action for the Northwest strikers came off well despite the fits and starts. We handed out several thousand flyers to the parade marchers as they walked past our sound truck on Woodward and Temple. We received an enthusiatic response from the mostly UAW marchers; many dropping money into the buckets for the strikers (about $2,400 was raised over the course of the two hour long march). David Sole, UAW local 2334's president, did a good job working the crowd with the message of cross-union solidarity (and building for an emergency meeting of local unions).

One UAW local's float had a big cardboard wrench on it that said "we support AMFA". Importantly you had people on the march dropping by to voice support for not flying NWA and supporting the strike. The head of Steelworkers District 2 said that they had cancelled all their flights with the airlines as had a local officer in ATU.

At the Greektown casino there were about 200-250 on hand for the picket, the bulk of them being the strikers and their families. The slogan went "gamble inside, not in a plane" as we marched around the casino. Members from CWA, APWU, UAW, USW, AFT, AFSCME, United Students Against Sweatshops, and Southeast Michigan JwJ were on hand and made solidarity speeches to the crowd.

Below is some related coverage. The first was on the front page "above the fold". The second story went out on the AP wire and was picked up by 92 media outlets across the country (mostly dailies) at my last count. A story made into USA Today with a picture of the AMFA marchers.

Splintered unions get in step for mechanics

BY JEWEL GOPWANI
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

September 6, 2005

David Sole planted his feet on two milk crates turned upside down Monday along Woodward Avenue. With a microphone in one hand and a picket sign in another, Sole had one message:

"Make sure your local doesn't fly Northwest Air," said Sole, a 57-year-old chemist and president of UAW Local 2334, to hundreds of union workers and their families who walked past him during the Labor Day parade in Detroit.

Although Sole is not among the 4,400 striking mechanics at Northwest Airlines, which has been operating with replacements since its union mechanics went on strike Aug. 20, he said he's tired of organized labor's tepid response to the strike.

Closely watched in the airline industry and among other unions, the Northwest mechanics strike comes at a time when unions across metro Detroit are fighting off job and pay cuts. They're doing so against the backdrop of a splintered national labor movement.

"Union solidarity is at a breaking point," said Dennis Sutton, vice president of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association Local 5. "It's either going to go one way or the other -- and AMFA is right in the middle of it."

Northwest, Michigan's most important airline, carries more than 60% of passengers at Metro Airport. The financially strapped airline, which is losing $4 million a day and is expected to lose more than $1 billion this year, employs about 8,800 mostly unionized workers in Michigan, including about 900 mechanics and plane cleaners.

Striking over a contract that would cut nearly half of its unionized mechanics and most of its plane cleaners, AMFA has spent the last two weeks on strike alone.

No other Northwest union has joined the mechanics.

Airport picket lines, designed by airport officials not to hinder traffic, are porous.

Some mechanics, who had followed their jobs to Detroit, have headed home. As savings accounts start to dry up, some are searching for new jobs even as they picket. And union officials confirmed that at least one mechanic has crossed the picket line.

So it helped the mechanics' resolve to learn that AMFA raised more than $2,000 for its strike fund during Monday's parade. It also helped to hear other union workers say they canceled their plans to fly on Northwest in support of the strike.

"I felt a lot of pride," said Ruben Sosa, a 44-year-old striking Northwest mechanic from Taylor who put off taking a new job for a month so he could continue picketing.

While slow to start, support is growing for AMFA, said Chris Kutalik, editor of Labor Notes, a monthly publication advocating changes to the labor movement.

But in rounding up support, AMFA is in a sense fighting its past. The mechanics have been on their own since 1998, when they bitterly left another Northwest union -- the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which still represents Northwest ticket agents and ground workers.

Now AMFA is trying to gain support amid a labor movement that is itself splintered, with unions breaking away from the AFL-CIO -- which counts the machinists among its member unions.

And in seeking that support, this year is the first time the union has taken part in the Labor Day parade.

During an afternoon rally in Greektown, AMFA members were buoyed as they enter their third week on strike at Northwest. "It will really recharge our battery for another two weeks," Sutton said.

Contact JEWEL GOPWANI at 313-223-4550 or gopwani@freepress.com.

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Striking Northwest employees walk in Detroit's Labor Day parades

September 5, 2005, 4:04 PM

DETROIT (AP) -- Northwest Airlines employees on strike for more than two weeks took their picket line to the streets Monday during two Labor Day parades in Detroit, hoping their presence would help rally support from other unions.

"With the assault on labor right now, it was important for us to be out with all the unions," Bob Rose, president of Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association Local 5 in Detroit, said in describing the more than 100 Northwest union members, family and friends who showed up to march in the parades.

Northwest mechanics, cleaners and custodians have been on strike since Aug. 20. The local AMFA represents more than 900 Northwest employees at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in nearby Romulus. Nationally, the union represents 4,427 mechanics, cleaners and custodians, about 11 percent of Northwest's 40,000 employees.

The mechanics average about $70,000 a year in pay, and the cleaners and custodians can make around $40,000. The company wanted to cut their wages by about 25 percent as part of a package to save it $176 million a year.

It also wanted to lay off about 2,000 workers. The cuts would be concentrated among the cleaners and custodians.

Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest has said it needs $1.1 billion in labor savings from all its workers. Only pilots have agreed, accepting a 15 percent pay cut worth $300 million when combined with cuts for salaried employees. Northwest is currently negotiating with ground workers and flight attendants, and it has said it can reopen talks with pilots once it gets concessions from the other groups.

The airline has pledged to keep its planes in the air, saying it has been preparing for the strike for more than a year and a half.

The parade gave Rose the opportunity to talk to fellow union leaders. He will present the Northwest strikers' case at other unions' meetings in hopes of gathering more support, he said.

"We need solidarity. This is a union town, and it's time to show that," he said.

Northwest is Michigan's largest passenger air carrier and accounted for about 66 percent of Detroit Metro's passenger traffic last year. It is the nation's fourth-largest carrier.

The airline has the oldest fleet among domestic airlines and has hired replacement workers during the strike.

Debbie Thirkelson, a Northwest flight attendant, said it is a moral struggle to go to work.

"I have to walk by these non-unionized guys who are doing my husband's job while he's picketing," she said. The flight attendants' union has not joined the mechanics, though Thirkelson said she voted to join the strike at a recent union meeting.

Her husband, Jim, said he is ready to go back to work but does not feel valued at the company.

Also on Monday, a Minnesota-based mechanics union leader said Northwest has filed a lawsuit in Minnesota against the mechanics union over its striking mechanics' efforts to block buses transporting replacement workers last week.

The lawsuit alleges six counts of violations of Minnesota's state statutes, said Ted Ludwig, president of the Minneapolis local of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association.

Striking mechanics tried to block the buses taking replacement workers to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Thursday. At three hotels, strikers chanted "scabs go home" and "scab hotel." One striker was arrested and cited for blocking traffic.

AMFA received papers of the lawsuit Friday night, Ludwig said.

Ludwig said he met with attorneys on Sunday and Monday and believes that Northwest doesn't have a case.

"We didn't break any laws," he said. "We worked with police at all locations. If we had broken the law, the police would have put us in jail."

Northwest officials could not be immediately reached for comment Monday afternoon.

A LABOR DAY APPEAL

2005-09-02T09:15:00.000-04:00

Meet & Greet the NWA Strikers Outside the Greektown Casino (Monroe at Brush)
Starting at NOON after the parade – "Don’t Gamble with Northwest Airlines Safety!"

A LABOR DAY APPEAL
Support Striking NWA Mechanics & Cleaners

As we march and celebrate Labor Day 2005, we should all remember the history and tradition of this holiday. It is "All for One and One for All." That is how the labor movement won everything we hold dear today.

Yet today the mechanics and cleaners at Northwest Airlines are striking alone. Our labor solidarity must not be selective.

Northwest Airlines hasn’t made a secret of its goal. This is the first shot in an anti-union war that intends to destroy one union at a time. The entire airline industry, in fact, is out to force massive concessions or entirely break the unions so the CEO’s can line their pockets.

Ask any worker, from any union, in the airline industry. They all feel under the gun. They all work together to keep the planes flying safely and they all are talking about their common problems.

It is only the officials at the top of some unions that have a problem from old wounds. This keeps them from responding to the crisis situation.

But Detroit is a union town. We have a great history of UNITY and SOLIDARITY. Our Central Labor Council along with the UAW International and local unions have played a leading role in building support for workers under siege.

We therefore call upon the Metro-Detroit AFL-CIO to convene an EMERGENCY MEETING of all labor to get behind the Northwest strikers. We can and must come together in unity despite the unfortunate split in the Federation and despite past differences and grudges.

All of us are facing a growing crisis. Bosses everywhere are attacking or getting ready to attack our jobs, wages, pensions, health care and other benefits. Detroit City workers are under pressure for pay and benefit cuts. Farmer Jack workers face loss of jobs and wages. The Big Three are after the UAW to give back. It is time to come together under one roof and map out a winning strategy for labor and our communities. Together we can do it.

Let’s start fighting back by getting behind the AMFA strikers at Northwest Airlines.

AD HOC COMMITTEE TO AID THE NORTHWEST AIRLINES WORKERS:
Add your name to this appeal by calling: 313-680-5508
Chris Kutalik, Editor Labor Notes; Kevin Mackey, member IBEW Local 58; David Sole, President UAW Local 2334; Carter Stevenson, V.P. APTE; Wendy Thompson, past-president UAW Local 235

Thursday meeting and support from Monroe County AFL-CIO

2005-08-31T12:18:00.000-04:00

A meeting has been called for tomorrow to help plan for the Labor Day rally. Come one and all.
The intention is to march with the Labor Day parade and then to end at the Workers Memorial in front of Hart Plaza. More details to follow as they develop.

Meeting is at the MCHT building in Detroit tomorrow at 6:30 pm. The address is 2727 Second Ave (click here if you need a map http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=2727+Second+Ave.&csz=detroit+mi&country=us&new=1&name=&qty=).
Entrance from the fenced parking lot on the South East Corner of Temple and 3rd east of the Motor City Casino.

http://detroitsupport.blogspot.com/

Enclosed is a letter written by the President of the Monroe-Lenawee County AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.

8/30/05

The following letter was published in the Monroe Evening News on August 28, 2005:

To the Editor:

Northwest Airlines wants you to believe that the replacement mechanics that they have hired for the strike by the Aircraft Mechanics are as highly trained as the mechanics that have worked on Northwest planes for decades. They want you to believe that your safety won't be compromised by hiring mechanics who will be working on an aging fleet of Northwest planes for the first time in their lives, with just a few months of training to prepare them. This training consisted mostly of paperwork procedures and some classroom training. During the first few days of the strike they had four emergency landings in Detroit alone. Everything is fine, really.

The airline wants you to believe that it is perfectly okay to outsource the remainder of the maintenance to places like China and the Philippines, in spite of the fact that foreign mechanics are not subject to the same background checks and scrutiny as are those in the U. S.. They also want you to think that it is okay to use non-union low-wage maintenance facilities in this country. Even though the INS recently raided one of these facilities and found dozens of illegal aliens working on planes there. This is more than a safety issue; it is a homeland security issue.

Cutting comers in maintenance has already cost too many lives. In 2000, an Alaskan Airlines flight crashed killing 83 people. The National Safety Transportation Board recommended that Alaska make improvements in its maintenance program. They have since responded by laying off half of their maintenance workforce. In 2003, US Airways Express flight #5481 crashed killing 21 people. The NTSB attributed the accident, in
part, to sub-standard maintenance by a third party contractor. I won't be flying Northwest Airlines during this strike. It's really not okay, regardless of how cheap the ticket price is. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

Sincerely,
L. Wm Conner, Jr.
Monroe-Lenawee County AFL-CIO Central Labor Council

Saturday's Ox Roast(s)

2005-08-29T12:06:00.000-04:00

Despite all the Saturday confusion after the IBEW hall was locked up, the two events at McCarthy's and the Anchor seemed to be successful. There was about 50 people at McCarthy's at the high point and the Anchor was "packed" (no number guess there). $1,600 was raised at the Anchor and another $1,200 at McCarthy's and there is a report that more is coming.

The strikers seemed "very surprised and gratified" in the words of one local diehard.

Plans are still in the works for a Labor Day action after the parade downtown. Stay tuned for more information.

Also see below for report on Minneapolis rally from the Twin Cities clc paper. Note the fact that there are 50 IAM members who are not crossing the pickets.

Twin Cities Rally for Northwest Workers

2005-08-29T11:45:00.000-04:00

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/view_article.php?id=075510d426dd246185b96bb0cb4364ea

Supporters rally for Northwest Airlines workers
By Barb Kucera, Workday Minnesota editor — August 28, 2005

BLOOMINGTON — One week after their walkout began, striking Northwest Airlines workers got a much-needed boost at a large, outdoor rally.
Hundreds of people turned out Saturday to support the 4,400 members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association outside the union's strike headquarters near Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Earlier in the day, a Solidarity Committee met to plan activities to support the strike.
The typical union rally would feature officers of the AFL-CIO and major unions. But because AMFA is an independent union not affiliated with the labor federation – formed by a split six years ago with the International Association of Machinists – such speakers were in short supply. But a number of elected officials and candidates for office filled the void.
Dave Foster, director of District 11 of the United Steelworkers, was one of the few union officers to address the crowd.
"I'm here to bring you a message of solidarity from the Steelworkers," he told the strikers. His message, like many others at the rally, emphasized the need for workers to unify in the face of attacks by Northwest and other employers.
"We understand the value of the sacrifice you're making today can't be measured in dollars and cents . . . " Foster said. "We want the jobs that make the American dream possible."
Striking AMFA members cheered speakers at Saturday's rally.
AMFA stands alone in its walkout. Most members of the Machinists, Professional Flight Attendants Association and the Air Line Pilots Association are crossing the AMFA picketline and keeping Northwest operating – along with replacement workers, "scabs," hired to do the work that had been performed by AMFA members.
Machinist Kip Hedges, one of about 50 members of his union honoring the picketline, said it was the right thing to do.
"We are all the same," he told the crowd at the rally. "The company hates every one of us and wants to bust every single one of the unions on the property . . . If we don't stand together, we are all dead. That's why I don't cross."
Many of the elected officials who spoke said they are concerned that Northwest has received many handouts from taxpayers, then demanded that AMFA give up half its jobs and cut wages by 25 percent.
"We've got a right to expect that a company we have given so much to, has a duty to give back to its employees and the rest of Minnesota," said state Senator Satveer Chaudhary, DFL-Fridley, to loud cheers.
"No airline that treats mechanics like this deserves a monopoly at the Lindbergh airport!" he shouted.
Many speakers also noted that while the airline faces possible bankruptcy, current and former Northwest executives have been making huge profits by selling their stock.
"It's wrong to put workers at the end of the line while owners of the company cash in their stock," said Hennepin County District Attorney Amy Klobuchar.
The banner summed up Steelworker District 11 Director Dave Foster's message at the rally.
Other speakers at the rally included Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, St. Paul mayoral candidate Chris Coleman and Second District Congressional candidate Colleen Rowley.
A strike Solidarity Committee announced that supporters would demonstrate Tuesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. outside the Radisson Metrodome hotel at Washington Ave. and Harvard St., Minneapolis, where Northwest is housing some replacement workers. Other solidarity actions are planned. For more information, e-mail the committee at nwasolidaritymsp@hotmail.com

Change of venue for Ox Roast

2005-08-27T08:21:00.000-04:00

From the Friends of Labor:

Sometime today (Friday) an ultimatum came down from somewhere
ordering the local IBEW to not allow their hall as a venue for the
Solidarity Ox Roast supporting airplane mechanics scheduled for Sat.
night.

But we are still going to have an event at McCarthys, located on Fort
Street (near Trumbull) across from the Salvation Army in Detroit.

Please check your email early tomorrow (Saturday) for more info as it
becomes available.

Sorry for any inconveniences, but please try and be there to show
some rank & file support for these brothers and sisters.

Solidarity Forever

Update from 8/24 Strike Support Meeting

2005-08-25T15:50:00.000-04:00

We had a productive meeting last night to get outside labor and community support for the strikers kicked off. On hand were officers and members of UAW locals, Southeast Michigan Jobs with Justice, ACCOSS, IBEW, Labor Notes, and, of course, some of our striking brothers at AMFA Local 5.

Things we decided to do:

1. Build for the Saturday Ox Roast fundraiser for the strikers at:
IBEW Local 58 Hall 1358 Abbott (at Trumbull) Corktown in Detroit Saturday August 27. Doors open at 5:30 pm, Dinner 7pm. $10 donation requested
-- Phonebanking today and tomorrow
-- Hold a bigger meeting at the Roast with more participation to build for the following activities
-- Prepare a flyer to hand out at the Roast that would list future dates for actions and events

2. Organize a Labor Day action in downtown Detroit
-- The strikers will be attempting to join the march downtown.
-- Flyers and banners will be made
-- An appropriate downtown target for the action will be announced later

3. Organize another possible action on or around Sept 11 (to be announced)

4. Encourage local union and community members to join the picket line.

-- Because of security and transportation issues at the airport supporters were asked to come in random groups (not in a single big crowd). Come at any time. All are welcome.
-- Best place to come is to the parking lot of UAW Local 174 (located at 29841 Van Born Road in Romulus). You can get a ride from here.

5. Create a public awareness campaign about the need to boycott Northwest and about the inevitable safety issues that will come up (1,400 scabs replacing 4,400 workers--you do the math). We will be trying to spread some of the untold word of what's happening in and around the strike to the media.

6. Get union and community members to donate to the strike relief fund. Checks can be made to:
AMFA NationalAttn: NWA Strike Committee, 67 Water Street, Suite 208A, Laconia, NH 03246.

All monies donated to this account shall be disbursed at the direction of the NWA Strike Committee. The purpose of this account is to support the efforts of the NWA people on the picket lines. Any funds not disbursed prior to the end of the strike will be held in trust and used to support any future strike efforts.