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ALPA: No Support for NWA Striking Mechanics!

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During the 1992 USAir mechanics strike, AFA was ordered (by a Federal court no less) not to have a sympathy strike with the mechanics. Once a court precedent has been set the ball-less won't strike.
 
As a NWAALPA member, I do recall that in 1998 during our pilot strike, the NWA mechanics did not sympathy strike with us.

It's no suprise that ALPA did not honor the AMFA strike at NWA.

I'm certain that NWA management will be placing large demands on our pilot group in the near future.

NWA has already given NWAALPA its demands for further concessions from the pilots. Some of their requests include, an additional 22% pay cut (in addition to the 15% given in Dec 2004, for a total pay cut of 37%), removing all flying flown by the DC9 (160 airframes) and transferring it to a new entity called Newco with regional pay rates, eliminating the pension plan and freezing it wherever it is, and a resulting furlough of an additional 1200 pilots with already 600 pilots on furlough......

No a pretty picture......
 
jetflier said:
As a NWAALPA member, I do recall that in 1998 during our pilot strike, the NWA mechanics did not sympathy strike with us./QUOTE]

That might be true, but did your management have a bunch of scabs there to staff your flights? IT seems there was no work for the mechanics to go to , you guys shut down the airline. There was nothing more that they could help you to accomplish.

But if the pilots now went on sympathy strike, you can be sure NWA would have to work something out with the mechanics, and quickly.
 
Networ-King said:
FUKING BUNCH OF ALPA P U S S I E S !!!!!!!!!!!

Last month Delta Alpa FUKS greenslipped 5000 times..... which equated to 384 hard lines and now these FUKS won't even support their own people.... what a surprise. You bunch of P U S S I E S........



I agree with you on DALPA. We would have every furlough guy back if we all refused greenslips. Disgusts me.
Michael
DAL
haven't flown a greenslip since the furloughs began, and won't until TK is back
 
jetflier said:
As a NWAALPA member, I do recall that in 1998 during our pilot strike, the NWA mechanics did not sympathy strike with us.

It's no suprise that ALPA did not honor the AMFA strike at NWA.

I'm certain that NWA management will be placing large demands on our pilot group in the near future.

NWA has already given NWAALPA its demands for further concessions from the pilots. Some of their requests include, an additional 22% pay cut (in addition to the 15% given in Dec 2004, for a total pay cut of 37%), removing all flying flown by the DC9 (160 airframes) and transferring it to a new entity called Newco with regional pay rates, eliminating the pension plan and freezing it wherever it is, and a resulting furlough of an additional 1200 pilots with already 600 pilots on furlough......

No[t] a pretty picture......
uggggggggh! It's never going to end! :(

I was hoping this industry was going to turn a corner and get back to something resembling "normal" again.
 
From www.alpa.org:

August 19, 2005

Northwest Pilots Will Not Honor AMFA Strike

Bloomington, Minn. --- The Master Executive Council (MEC) of the NWA chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, Int'l has decided that NWA pilots will not honor the picket lines of striking NWA employees represented by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. Union leaders judged that a sympathy strike action was not in the best interests of NWA pilots and other NWA employees.

"I am deeply disappointed the parties were unable to reach a negotiated settlement," NWA MEC Chairman Capt. Mark McClain said. "The current environment requires labor costs to be part of an overall solution. Unfortunately, Northwest management continues to overplay its hand by demanding labor costs well below its competitors."

ALPA has stated since April 2003 that NWA management and all NWA employees would need to participate in a joint solution to help the company overcome its financial difficulties. NWA pilots acted in December 2004 when they agreed to provide NWA with $265 million annually in wage, work rule and benefit changes.

"There is still time to secure our company's future, but it will require a combined effort by NWA employees and management," McClain said. "Union leaders and senior management must meet face to face and hammer out a joint solution now. It will not be simple or painless. Everyone, including management, will need to share in the sacrifice."

The NWA chapter of ALPA represents 5,700 NWA pilots. Founded in 1931, ALPA is the world's oldest and largest pilot union representing more than 64,000 pilots at 41 airlines in the United States and Canada. Visit the ALPA website at http://www.alpa.org.

###
SOURCE: Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA)
ALPA CONTACT: Hal Myers, (717) 805-7929

Astounding! I thought the concept of a union was based in the idea of looking out for the interest of everyone in the long run, not in just personal, short term gain.

The fact that you have management commiting the most fundamental union breaking tactic: hiring lesser paid scabs (no debate at all here on the use of the term) to cross a picket line and perform the work at lower pay and benefits, while NWALPA "judged that a sympathy strike action was not in the best interests of NWA pilots..."

Is it just possible that facilitating the destruction of an airline union might itself be "not in the best interest of NWA pilots"?!
 
michael707767 said:
I agree with you on DALPA. We would have every furlough guy back if we all refused greenslips. Disgusts me.
Michael
DAL
haven't flown a greenslip since the furloughs began, and won't until TK is back

I don't fly greenslips (I would miss too much Flightinfo time). But, didn't we lose a court case for refusing to fly them? Back in C2K negotiations? We actually lost a court case saying that the stauts quo (greedy pick ups) was broken. That amazed me when I learned that we lost. How can you be sued and forced to fly on your off days?


Bye Bye---General Lee
 
August 21, 2005

Northwest Keeps Flying as Mechanics Strike
By MICHELINE MAYNARD and JEREMY W. PETERS

DETROIT, August 20 - Northwest Airlines kept flying on Saturday despite a strike by its mechanics over the airline's demand for extensive wage and job cuts. Other unions at Northwest did not join the mechanics' walkout, the first major labor disruption at a domestic airline since 1998.

The situation was a sharp contrast to the walkouts that shook the industry in the 1980's and 1990's, triggering airline bankruptcies and contributing to the demise of major industry names like Pan American World Airways and Eastern Airlines.

The lack of support for the mechanics - and Northwest's ability to operate despite the walkout - demonstrated a new reality in the airline industry, which has lost more than $30 billion and cut more than 130,000 jobs in the last five years, buffeted by stiff competition from low-fare competitors and record-high fuel prices.

"This strike may be of historic importance," said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "Here members of a labor union are on strike to save their jobs, and the rest of the labor movement refuses to help it. So much for solidarity."

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which represents 4,430 workers at the airline, went on strike at 12:01 a.m. after the two sides failed to agree on Northwest's effort to win $176 million in concessions.

Northwest immediately began using a contingency plan, replacing the union members with 1,500 temporary workers it had hired and trained over the last few months. And it imposed sharply lower pay rates on its mechanics, who under their union contract earn an average of just over $36 an hour. The airline said it was paying the replacements $27.17 an hour.

As a result of Northwest's planning, its operations resumed at airports across the United States and around the world. Some flights were delayed and others canceled. But bad weather in the Midwest, where many of Northwest's flights are concentrated, was the likely cause of some of these disruptions.

"The airline, all things considered, is running extraordinarily well," Northwest's chief executive, Douglas M. Steenland, said in a telephone interview on Saturday morning from his office in Eagan, Minn., where the airline is based.

Mr. Steenland said Northwest had not seen any measurable decline in future bookings as the strike loomed.

"Our passengers can depend on us," he said. "We are going to get them to their destinations as we've committed, and they can count on reliable service going forward." Northwest was directing passengers to its Web site, www.nwa.com, for information about individual flights.

In Paris, Northwest's daily flight from Charles De Gaulle Airport to Detroit left an hour behind schedule on Saturday afternoon. The airline said the delay was due to a late-arriving aircraft. But check-in lines at the airport moved swiftly, and passengers boarded and departed smoothly once the plane arrived.

At Northwest and other airlines, Saturday is the lightest day for travel during the week, so the real test of Northwest's efforts to continue running smoothly will come on Sunday and Monday, when its schedule is more hectic.

Many arriving passengers in Detroit paid little notice to the picketers, despite the city's reputation as a font of labor activism.

"I just want to get where I'm going," said Eric Johnson, 24, from Farmington Hills, Mich. Mr. Johnson and his friend Jeff Schwartz, 24, of Commerce, Mich., were taking a cigarette break outside while waiting for their flight to Bangkok.

"Everything seems to be running fine today," Mr. Schwartz added. "We were kind of surprised it was business as usual."

Northwest is seeking cuts from the mechanics' union as part of a broader bid to reduce its labor costs by $1.1 billion. The union said the cuts would have eliminated nearly half its members' jobs.

But in a sign of the lack of harmony among the airline's unions, Northwest's pilots, flight attendants, machinists and other workers crossed picket lines here and at other airports across the country. Northwest had threatened to fire any workers who staged sympathy strikes, which are illegal under labor contracts governing the airlines.

"This is a sad day for organized labor, a sad day," said Dave Gamanche, 52, an aircraft cleaner whose job was to have been eliminated under the cuts that Northwest proposed.

Mr. Gamanche was one of several Northwest workers who handed out pamphlets questioning the airline's safety to arriving travelers outside Detroit's airport, the airline's major hub for international flights, About 100 workers walked a picket line nearby.

Northwest and the Federal Aviation Administration have both said the airline would maintain its safety standards despite the strike. The airline said the replacement workers were licensed airline mechanics, many of them laid off from other carriers, who had been newly certified to work on Northwest's planes.

While the White House could order the mechanics' union back to work, officials there said last week that they would not do so because the strike did not threaten to disrupt the nation's transportation system.

The last major walkout in the airline industry also took place at Northwest, when pilots struck the airline briefly in 1998.

The airline and the union had been negotiating in Washington under the supervision of the National Mediation Board. No new talks were scheduled, although Mr. Steenland said the airline would meet with the union if it returned to the bargaining table.

Given its contingency plan, which also included hiring temporary flight attendants in the event that their union honored picket lines, Northwest felt it could handle the risk of a strike by the mechanics' union, Professor Chaison said.

"For the company, there was very little fear in a strike, so they figured, why not let one happen," Professor Chaison said. The mechanics' union is small and does not have strong backing from other unions, he said, so "management thought they could outlast the union."

Whether the toll for the airline will be greater as the strike goes on remains to be seen. The union's executive director, O.V. Delle-Femine, said this morning that he expected support from other workers to build as the strike went on.

But at least initially, the lack of strong allies was a blow to the mechanics' union, which has based its organizing efforts over the last 40 years on a no-concessions platform. "The takeaway here is, one, meticulous planning, second, responsible behavior by the other unions in reporting for work, and third, just the reality of the new world in which we live," Mr. Steenland said.

Micheline Maynard and Jeremy W. Peters reported from Detroit for this article. Maisie Wilhelm contributed reporting from Paris.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
 
Jetjockey said:
It reminds me of that mentality of watching someone while they are getting mugged. Sure you could go help the poor the victim, but that's not your problem. Don't worry NWA ALPA, you'll get your turn to get mugged another day.

Divide and conquer.

How do view the people who are continuing to fly NWA during strike? Are they Scabs?
 

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