Fraters Libertas

You Got Your Snap-ons, They Got The Power

Two articles in today's Wall Street Journal on the Northwest strike.

Northwest Charts Rapid Recovery

Six days into a strike by its mechanics, Northwest Airlines said its operations are recovering rapidly from disruptions that began a few days before the walkout began last Saturday.

"We've clearly been challenged through the week," said Andy Roberts, executive vice president of operations, in an interview. But the replacement technicians and management employees who are tending to the carrier's 468 jetliners have been working through a backlog of maintenance write-ups and out-of-service aircraft. "We are certainly in the band of normal operations now."

A source at Northwest very close to this situation said exactly the same thing to me yesterday. The biggest worry for the airline was the first five days of the strike. They appear to have weathered that period with relatively minor disruptions and little overall impact on their business. Now they expect the replacement mechanics to become increasingly efficient as they become more familiar with the planes they're working on and the facilities that they're working in. The source explained that some of it is as simple as learning where various tools and parts are stored.

He also said that in the weeks leading up to the strike, the mechanics let some of the routine maintenance chores (I would imagine not any impacting safety) slip, creating a backlog of work which the replacement mechanics have been working to reduce this week.

The other article focuses on One Mechanic's Journey to Aid Northwest Air and demonstrates the quixotic nature of the strike:

Mr. Jones's path to Northwest offers a glimpse at why the airline's striking mechanics have considerably less clout that in years past to extract a better contract from the nation's fourth-largest carrier. Years of laying off workers and paring flights after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have created a vast group of skilled replacement workers, which the airline has tapped to keep its planes running during a potentially crippling strike.

Northwest officials have said they had no trouble lining up a cadre of 1,200 replacement mechanics, who the carrier claims have an average of 14 years' experience working on planes, many of the type Northwest operates, and are all federally licensed. Northwest is paying the replacements $26.53 an hour, slightly less than the $27.17 scale in its final offer to the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association union. Before the strike, top pay for an experienced AMFA mechanic with a federal "airframe and powerplant" license was $36.39, yielding annual pay of more than $70,000, near the top in the industry.

Once again, this was exactly what I heard yesterday. There were plenty of experienced, highly qualified mechanics out of work in the market that Northwest has been able to brig in as replacements. Many of them had been forced to take lesser paying jobs after being let go in the wake of 9/11 and jumped at the chance to come to Northwest. Some have left their families behind in other states for the opportunity to earn more money and many hope to end up becoming permanent employees at Northwest.

The person I spoke with has ridden the bus bringing replacement workers in to work (known as the "scab cab") and reports that despite the slurs and taunts from picketing mechanics, the replacement workers have not been deterred in their desire to show up. The availability, skill, and enthusiasm of these workers has all but doomed the union mechanics chances of staging a successful strike. It's only a matter of time (and missed paychecks) before a few of the union mechanics start trickling across the picket lines as they begin to comprehend the futility of their position.

AMFA's miscalculation of Northwest's ability to continue to operate with replacement workers and its alienation of the other unions at Northwest has resulted in a situation where they have no real hope of emerging victorious. The only question now is whether it will stubbornly drag its rank and file workers down with it. Plenty of replacement mechanics certainly hope so.