[QUOTE=travelerjim] Sol Gothard, an appeals judge in Louisiana's state courts, didn't know anything about a strike looming until their flight was canceled 10 minutes before boarding.

this person is a judge !!!! - I know justice is meant to be blind - but this is ridiculous - has he not picked up a newspaper or turned on the TV lately .... ... oh , hang on a second , he's from Louisiana , maybe I am expecting too much of him

[QUOTE=travelerjim]Northwest mechanics go on strike...

^ Northwest mechanics strike, airline keeps flying UPDATE from MSNBC...
Ailing carrier brings in replacement workers as part of contingency plan

Updated: 1:14 p.m. ET Aug. 20, 2005 AP

MINNEAPOLIS - Northwest Airlines brought replacement workers on the job Saturday after mechanics went on strike to protest big pay cuts and layoffs that would have cut their numbers almost in half.

The nation�s fourth-largest carrier pledged to keep its planes in the air, saying it has been preparing for the strike for more than a year and a half, including lining up about 1,900 replacement workers, vendor employees and managers to fill shifts.

While striking mechanics ridiculed the idea that Northwest could fly without them, there were no signs of disruption in the day�s flights at the carrier�s U.S. hubs in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit and Memphis, Tenn.
more...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9001752/ .

^ Mechanics strike but Northwest Air aloft

Reuters

Updated: 3:04 p.m. ET Aug. 20, 2005
By Kyle Peterson

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mechanics and other maintenance workers at Northwest Airlines <NWAC.O> walked off the job on Saturday after labor talks failed to produce a deal to help the carrier cut costs and avert possible bankruptcy.

Northwest Airlines, which flies some 177,000 passengers daily and is particularly strong in the Midwest, said it has continued operations by replacing about 4,400 striking employees with 1,500 temporary workers and outside vendors.

The striking Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) said the first U.S. airline strike since 2001 would cause delays eventually, but Northwest reported no strike-related disruptions.

more...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9015733/ .

Northwest Brings in Replacement Workers UPDATE/AP
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Northwest Airlines brought replacement workers on the job Saturday after mechanics went on strike to protest big pay cuts and layoffs that would have cut their numbers almost in half.

The nation's fourth-largest carrier pledged to keep its planes in the air, saying it has been preparing for the strike for more than a year and a half, including lining up about 1,900 replacement workers, vendor employees and managers to fill shifts.

more...

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/tic...Symbol=US:NWAC .

Labor Update (from nwa.com)

Northwest Airlines Operates as Scheduled

EAGAN, Minn. - (August 20, 2005; 1:00 p.m. CDT) -- Northwest's operations on the first day of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) strike got off to a very good start. "We are very pleased with the quality and reliability of our operations so far," said Andy Roberts, EVP - operations. "The first day went off exactly as the plan was laid out."

"Northwest customers can continue to depend on Northwest for their travel needs. We intend to operate our normal schedule of domestic and international flights," said Doug Steenland, president and chief executive officer. "Northwest has experienced, licensed and trained mechanics in place to service all NWA aircraft. The airline remains in full compliance with all Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations."

more...

http://www.nwa.com/features/laborupdate/index.html .

A "good start" isnt particularly the word I would have used to make this news release. A strike is a strike, and its resolution would have been better.

Jiburi

A message for "replacement workers"...

Steve MacFarlane, The Assistant National Director of AMFA recently released a letter to the replacement workers.

An open letter to the NWA Replacement Aircraft Mechanics

Please read this before you cross the line...

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) and Northwest Airlines management have been in legal and protracted negotiations for months. The issues are basic to all labor—wages, pensions, and working conditions. The failure at Northwest is a direct result of mismanagement.

Many of you have worked in aviation and lost your jobs due to no fault of your own. We all know this is true. Corporate greed and a lack of vision are why the legacy carriers are reeling today while others are making money.

We share the same dreams and goals as you: food, clothing, shelter, and health care for our families. We all want to give our children the advantage of a good education. When our working lives wind down, we all hope to enjoy the fruits of our labor in retirement.
Nevertheless these shared values do not ever justify strike-breaking and union-busting—the obvious goal of the company.

History of mismanagement

We learned some undisputed truths in the long years of dealing with NWA management. We understand that this corporation seeks only one thing: profits for the company and unconscionable personal gain for top executives at our expense.
Only through the collective bargaining power of an organized union have we been able to win the current level of benefits. Without a union, we have no doubt that our compensation would be much, much less.

We do not have our heads in the sand when it comes to the realities of this business. We understand the fundamental changes in the airline industry. In response we made a reasonable offer to management. Management rejected it outright. The senior executives chose instead to attack the very workers responsible for the success of this airline.

Where do you fit in?

If Northwest management is successful in its goal to bust this union, the company will then come after all workers, including those used to break the strike. Crossing the picket line sows the seeds that will erode your pay and benefits.

:-: We urge you to stand down and reject Northwest’s attempt to destroy AMFA. If not, you will always be known as a scab – someone looked down upon. You might not care what others think of you now, but this stain remains.

:-: AMFA members could easily be your neighbor, a member of your church, or the parent of one of your children’s classmates. Once you cross the AMFA picket line—and don’t turn back—you cannot undo that action. The anonymous worker that you undermine today will certainly become a real person with a face and a name as your life proceeds.

AMFA represents the interests of individual workers at NWA and also the ongoing interests of the aviation maintenance craft. AMFA seeks to protect the worker and the job. :-: Weigh carefully the full consequence of your choices.

Will NWA management treat you fairly if it successfully breaks a mechanic strike? Is NWA capable of providing a training program necessary to insure mechanic competence on all its varied fleets? Will you be able to raise safety concerns to management without fear of losing your job? How will you feel when management presses you to sign off work you are unsure about? How will you feel knowing passengers' lives are at stake? Will you be able to rest easy during your off hours? What if you are treated unfairly, will you feel free to speak up?
A principled stand clears your conscience. :-: It also keeps open the possibility for your return to this profession under better circumstances.

The maintenance technicians and related workers at NWA need your help. We urge you to honor our strike. Don’t cross a fellow worker’s picket line!

Respectfully,
Steve MacFarlane
AMFA Assistant National Director

http://northweststrike.blogspot.com/ .

(please note ......I have :-: the points which I believe are implied and direct threats to the replacement workers from the AMFA union leadership....

TravelerJim

It seems to me that the union should be nailed for extortion.

CHICAGO (Reuters) -

. . . "An airline official acknowledged earlier, however, that Northwest has suspended its daily on-time performance report." . . . .

Sounds like the OnTime performance is taking a pretty large dent.

Interesting choices.....

Cross the line to work but be called a "scab"

Don't cross the line, lose the house, blame someone else for your problems, but at least you're part of a "union"

Sounds like high school to me. The union and the mechanics that back them can go screw themselves. If the mechanics are as great as they say they are, they can find a job anywhere and be paid just as much, they don't need some "representative" to find the job for them.

There was some nasty weather there too, so it was just a difficult day all around.

Hm...and I thought it was somewhat reasonable compared to what I originally expected. Yes, it pushes the edge a bit more than I'd like, but it makes a clear and reasoned point that will likely resonate with a number of mechanics that are on furlough from one airline or another. I don't see those bits you marked as a threat -- they're an appeal to the individual to understand what AMFA's side is in these issues.

I would be so worried about being called a "scab" for the rest of my life, I would have to sit in my house that is now being paid for since I was back at work and worry about those that lost theirs b/c of their own stupidity.

Maybe NW won't take care of them in the future, but it certainly does not look like AMFA is taking care of any one right at the moment. We are on strike and the company is operating and someone else willing took the concessions we would not. I think we have a term for that in this country, it is called Free Market Economy, where in market forces dictate pay and benefits not Union bosses.

Real Test for Northwest Comes This Week
08.21.2005, 06:13 PM

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/...ap2186981.html

Northwest Airlines Corp. got off to a smooth start by keeping its planes flying when mechanics struck. But the real test for the company and its replacement mechanics arrives with a far busier weekday schedule.

The strike began on Saturday, generally the lightest flying day of the week. Northwest averages 1,215 flights on Saturdays - but that increases to 1,381 on Sunday and 1,473 on weekdays, company spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch said Sunday.

The airline will find that maintaining its schedule will be tougher as the work week begins, said airline consultant Scott Hamilton, an airline consultant for Leeham Co. in Sammamish, Wash.

"Sooner or later if the replacement mechanics can't keep on top of it, it's going to start causing cancellations," he said.

Northwest's unionized mechanics, cleaners and custodians walked off the job Saturday morning after refusing to take pay cuts and layoffs that would have reduced their ranks almost by half. No new talks have been scheduled.

Northwest said there were few cancellations and most flights were on time, though the company declined to provide specifics.

Terry Trippler of cheapseats.com, a ticket fare Web site, said Northwest's schedule had recovered from a work slowdown just before the strike began Saturday morning. Northwest apologized to passengers for delays then, and said it would work to resolve them.

"This weekend has gone much much better than I think (the union) thought it was going to, and maybe a little bit worse than Northwest wanted it to," he said.

Northwest said there were few cancellations and most flights were on time, though the company declined to provide specifics. The nation's fourth-biggest carrier switched to its fall schedule Saturday, a week earlier than planned, lightening the schedule by about 17 percent.

Between 6 a.m. and noon EDT Sunday, Northwest had 85 delayed flights at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and 68 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, said Bob Rose, president of Local 5 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The local represents 916 Northwest employees in Detroit. The company had 234 delays at those two airports on Saturday, Rose said. He did not have data on canceled flights.

"Northwest is hurting. They're hurting themselves, and they're hurting the passengers," Rose said.

Northwest said it spent 18 months preparing for a strike by the mechanics union, arranging for about 1,900 replacement workers, vendors and managers.

There was little action at a command center set up by officials at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to deal with picket line incidents and mass travel disruptions, airport spokesman Patrick Hogan said.

There was no sign of other airlines moving to add capacity to make up for Northwest's cut. United Airlines and American Airlines both said they weren't adding capacity now, although they left open the possibility. Continental spokesman Martin DeLeon said the airline was operating as usual.

"We've been running load factors that are in the high 80s, and (Sunday) would be no exception," American spokesman Tim Smith said. "So there's relatively few seats out there for folks to chase. As this goes on, if it does, we might look at something else."

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association mechanics averaged about $70,000 a year in pay, and cleaners and custodians can make around $40,000. The company wants to cut their wages by about 25 percent.

Northwest also sought to lay off about 2,000 workers, almost halving a work force that is already half the size it was in 2001. The cuts would be concentrated among cleaners and custodians; Northwest has said other airlines use contractors to do that work for less.

Eagan-based Northwest has said it needs $1.1 billion in labor savings. Only pilots have agreed, accepting a 15 percent pay cut worth $300 million when combined with cuts for salaried employees. It is 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.

After talks broke off late Friday, union negotiator Jim Young said the mechanics would rather see the airline go into bankruptcy than agree to Northwest's terms. The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association represents 4,427 mechanics, cleaners and custodians, about 11 percent of Northwest's 40,000 employees.

Northwest has hubs in Detroit, Minneapolis, Memphis, Tenn., Tokyo and Amsterdam, Netherlands.



Associated Press Writer David N. Goodman in Detroit contributed to this report.

From the August 22, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0822/p03s01-usec.html

With strike on, Northwest eyes bottom line

The first walkout at a major airline since 1998 comes as Northwest nears the possibility of bankruptcy.

By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As passengers start checking their bags on Northwest flights Monday, they will part of the first real test of both the striking mechanics' power and management's resolve.

Monday is the first day the airline will be flying a full schedule since Northwest's mechanics and maintenance workers walked off the job early Saturday morning. The weekend saw only a handful of disruptions, in part because management had more than 1,300 replacement workers ready to step in, but also because the weekend schedule is lighter than weekdays.

Analysts say that Monday will give the first indication of whether the strike has the potential to disrupt flight operations enough to force Northwest's management to reconsider its final offer. It could also show whether the combination of replacement workers and excess capacity in independent maintenance operations will undermine the strike completely, allowing the airline to run pretty much as usual.

This is the first strike at a major airline since 1998, when Northwest's pilots walked off the job for 20 days. It comes at a time when the so-called legacy carriers are in the worst financial shape in commercial aviation's history of more than 80 years. The majors are coping with unprecedented losses: Both United and US Airways are in bankruptcy, and analysts expect Delta and Northwest may follow soon.

They're all dogged by the same dilemma: the need to cut costs significantly enough to compete with low-cost carriers like Southwest and JetBlue, at the same time that jet-fuel prices are soaring. Northwest says it needs another $1.1 billion in cost savings in order to avoid a bankruptcy filing, and management is determined to get that from its own workers or, if necessary, new ones.

The better option?

"Northwest management believes that a replacement operation is actually more economically advantageous than the settlement they proposed," says aviation analyst Robert Mann of R.W. Mann & Co. of Port Washington, N.Y. "So if they're able to generate superior economics and run a reliable operation with replacement workers, there's literally no reason to bargain."

On the other hand, if the delays begin to pile up, flights are canceled, and passenger frustration becomes widespread, then Northwest will have to consider its other options. Mr. Mann believes that chief among them is bankruptcy, rather than giving in to the union's demands. Northwest has been "very consistent" about drawing the line on how much they're willing to spend on a maintenance operation.

This is why many analysts believe that Northwest's 4,400 mechanics and maintenance workers are between a rock and a hard place. Northwest is asking for cost savings of $176 million from the mechanics. The airline is proposing to reach that number by laying off half of them and cutting the salaries of those remaining by 25 percent.

The draconian nature of the cuts has inspired sympathy for the mechanics among many airline workers, who have watched their once-generous pay and benefits disappear as the industry undergoes a postderegulation transformation.

But that sympathy is also tempered by the aviation industry's new economic reality. Northwest's flight attendants, pilots, and other workers are crossing the picket line, and laid-off mechanics from other airlines are lining up to take their jobs.

"I give these guys at Northwest credit that they had the guts to do this. I really don't see that they had any other choice," says Ray Gardner, a mechanic who formerly worked at a major airline. "But I also have to agree that they might be shooting themselves in the foot. There are plenty of people to take those jobs, and I'd bet in six to eight weeks, these guys, the scabs they hired, are probably going to be just as good as the people they're replacing."

The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), which represents Northwest's mechanics, insists that's not the case. It notes that Northwest has the oldest fleet in the industry and its union members have decades of experience keeping them aloft safely. It's predicting that the replacements won't be as skilled or competent. The airline disputes that, but nonetheless the Federal Aviation Administration has stepped up inspections at Northwest maintenance facilities to ensure work is being done properly.

The airline is also facing increased scrutiny from the media. While flight delays and cancellations due to maintenance problems are routine, every one is now being noted by the press whether it's strike related or not.

The longer it goes ...

Many aviation analysts agree that Northwest could have a rocky few days, but the longer the strike drags on, they believe the maintenance operation will become more stable.

"There's a lot of excess capacity in third-party maintenance. They'll have no problem maintaining these planes," says aviation expert Darryl Jenkins, a visiting professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "It's not a happy time to be a mechanic."

Because of the challenges, some analysts also see this strike as a test of AMFA. Prior to 1998, the union represented only 1,500 mechanics. It then won the right to represent Northwest mechanics, taking them away from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM.) In 2003, it took away United mechanics from IAM as well. It now represents 20,000 mechanics.

"The attitude they have toward the workers is really refreshing. They believe in telling them all of the facts and letting them make up their own mind," says Aaron Gellman, founder of Northwestern University's Transportation Center in Evanston, Ill. "If they come out of this with glory in any sense, they're likely to steamroll IAM in a lot of other places than just United."

Mr. Gellman says that bankruptcy may be the way Northwest chooses to resolve the situation, even though it's an unpleasant option. Bankruptcy allowed both US Airways and United to significantly cut costs, abrogate some labor contracts, and default on their pension obligations, turning them over to the federal government.

"That's given [those carriers] a very significant competitive advantage," says Clint Oster, a transportation economist at Indiana University at Bloomington. "You don't want to go into bankruptcy. On the other hand, what those carriers were able to get in bankruptcy in some sense is a standard against which you've got to measure yourself."

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