featheroleather
Advanced
- Aug 9, 2004
- 139
- 0
The Replacement Mechanics
By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHELINE MAYNARD
Published: August 24, 2005
Northwest strikers in Romulus, Mich., shouted on Tuesday at buses carrying replacement workers, many of them laid off by other airlines.
Seconds later, the buses chug off for their destination: Northwest Airlines' operations at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, 10 miles away.
These men and a handful of women are at the center of the airline industry's most significant labor dispute in more than a decade. And they may be taking part in another historic moment of a different kind: busting unions, 21st century style.
They are among the 1,900 replacement workers deployed by Northwest to assume the duties of 4,430 mechanics, cleaners and other members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The union struck the airline on Saturday over the airline's demand for $176 million in pay and benefit cuts.
Replacements interviewed this week say they do not regret their move, despite being derided as "scabs," "scum" and more unprintable epithets by the striking Northwest workers, who yell and sometimes spit down at them from sidewalks above the tarmac.
For some replacement workers, the Northwest jobs are a chance for better pay, and for many, a return to the industry where they worked before getting caught in the deluge of industry layoffs this decade. Among the replacements, Northwest says, are mechanics from United, Delta and other airlines. :down: :down: :down:
"I didn't have any hesitance," said a 34-year-old replacement mechanic from New York, who spoke on condition of anonymity, for good reason: Northwest required the replacements to sign confidentiality agreements as a condition of their employment, mechanics and officials with direct knowledge of the airline's action said.
Indeed, as the mechanic was speaking, security guards for Northwest, approached him and a New York Times reporter and reminded them of the confidentiality agreement, and the mechanic then cut the interview off.
The airline declined comment Tuesday; its chief executive, Douglas M. Steenland, did not respond to a request for an interview to discuss the use of replacements. The replacements have spent the last three months training under a $107 million contingency plan that the airline crafted in anticipation of a strike.
Many of them worked as airline mechanics before the industry's post-Sept. 11 jobs purge. Unable to find work with an airline, some were working in construction, others recently returned from Iraq as private contractors.
Resentment against the replacements runs high on the picket line here. "They're scabs - they care of nothing but themselves," said Bruce Bessell, 54, who has worked at Northwest for 14 years. "Society should shun" them, he said.
One mechanic, 38, who left United Airlines just before the September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, said he had some concerns about crossing a picket line.
But the $27 an hour Northwest is paying its replacements - $7 an hour more than he previously earned working for a private company - and his desire to return to the airline industry made up his mind.
"Nobody else is hiring, they're all laying off," said the former United mechanic.
Since deploying the replacements, including 1,200 mechanics, Northwest's operations have been operating fairly smoothly, although it saw significant delays as the strike got under way. It expects to cancel about 4 percent of its flights this week, double what the industry has experienced this year, the worst in the last five years for flight problems.
Not since a strike in 1989 by mechanics at Eastern Airlines, which eventually contributed to the airline's demise, has an airline tried to rely so heavily on replacements to keep its planes aloft.
But with airlines cutting more than 130,000 jobs this decade, in a bid to overcome $30 billion in losses, the mechanics' union "has picked the worst possible time" to strike over Northwest's demands, said David Gregory, professor of labor law at St. John's University in Queens.
On its Web site Tuesday, the union said it had begun collecting money to support the striking workers, which it said would be distributed at its discretion. If Northwest is successful, the union warned, "They will have effectively rewritten the book on how to bust a union; all other unionized groups in this country will be in danger."
The replacements do not see the strikers on the way to the airport because of the covered windows and the route. The buses enter through a back gate, away from the picket lines set up at the entrances to Northwest's sprawling terminal. But the strikers see their replacements and have taken pictures that have been posted on the Web.
Vance International, well known for providing security at struck companies, devised the airline's security procedures. In turn, Vance has subcontracted work to other companies, like the local firm that provides the guards here.
Although Northwest's pilots, flight attendants and machinists are not honoring the mechanics' picket line, replacements say they have not received a warm welcome. Members of those unions sometimes refuse to say hello, give directions or answer simple questions, like how to find an exit, the mechanics said.
A senior official at one national union, who asked not to be identified, said there was bound to be animosity between union members and replacements. "Nobody's happy about what happened," the union official said, adding that his organization was not about to tell its members to be nice to the replacements.
Such a cold reception is no surprise, however, in a town where the United Auto Workers union was forged nearly 70 years ago. The Hyatt Regency hotel where replacements are staying is a short drive from the site of the 1937 Battle of the Overpass, where Ford Motor guards bloodied Walter P. Reuther in an incident that generated support for the fledging union.
But the replacements said the snubs were not enough to deter them. They also face other challenges, some of them simple, like finding where the restrooms are or learning how to swipe a time card, which one mechanic said was made more difficult because a vandal had put glue in the card reader. As a result, Northwest is clocking each worker's time by hand, he said.
More serious are the repairs mechanics say they have had to make to jets the airline contends were damaged by the departing strikers. Northwest took about 60 planes out of service at times over the weekend to fix various problems. Its fleet has 432 planes.
Less critical, but more personal, is loneliness. The replacements, housed at the Hyatt at Northwest's expense, came here after three months of training in Tucson, learning to repair Northwest's planes.
Here, they spend off-hours in the hotel bar or camped out in each other's rooms, turning the place into the mechanics' equivalent of a college dorm. Some are already getting on their roommates' nerves.
"There's a lot of complaining: 'This guy drinks too much. This guy smokes. This guy watches T.V. at three in the morning,' " the former United mechanic said. The airline, he said, has been accommodating. "They need us, so they have to treat us nice," he said.
The Northwest strike is calling to mind one of the industry's most notorious disruptions, the two-year walkout by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Eastern that began in March 1989.
Some 8,500 mechanics and other workers represented by the union struck over cuts sought by the airline, then operating under bankruptcy protection. Eastern immediately deployed 7,400 replacement workers, including 1,100 licensed mechanics. Pilots and flight attendants, who initially honored picket lines, were back to work by Thanksgiving.
The mechanics remained on strike as the airline sold routes, cut service and eliminated jobs. Eventually, Eastern ceased flying in 1991, having never reached a settlement with the machinists.
As at Eastern, union officials contend things will eventually deteriorate at Northwest as the strike wears on. "Northwest's operations are under pressure, and NWA is attempting to paint a much brighter picture than exists," the union said in an update to members Tuesday.
But the former United mechanic said his fellow replacements felt the mechanics' union had miscalculated by staging the walkout. "We said, 'they're not that stupid; they aren't going to lose their pensions, lose their seniority, lose their whatever,' " he said.
Northwest's ability to operate, at least thus far, has proved "they can be replaced - they thought they couldn't," he said.
By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHELINE MAYNARD
Published: August 24, 2005
Northwest strikers in Romulus, Mich., shouted on Tuesday at buses carrying replacement workers, many of them laid off by other airlines.
Seconds later, the buses chug off for their destination: Northwest Airlines' operations at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, 10 miles away.
These men and a handful of women are at the center of the airline industry's most significant labor dispute in more than a decade. And they may be taking part in another historic moment of a different kind: busting unions, 21st century style.
They are among the 1,900 replacement workers deployed by Northwest to assume the duties of 4,430 mechanics, cleaners and other members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The union struck the airline on Saturday over the airline's demand for $176 million in pay and benefit cuts.
Replacements interviewed this week say they do not regret their move, despite being derided as "scabs," "scum" and more unprintable epithets by the striking Northwest workers, who yell and sometimes spit down at them from sidewalks above the tarmac.
For some replacement workers, the Northwest jobs are a chance for better pay, and for many, a return to the industry where they worked before getting caught in the deluge of industry layoffs this decade. Among the replacements, Northwest says, are mechanics from United, Delta and other airlines. :down: :down: :down:
"I didn't have any hesitance," said a 34-year-old replacement mechanic from New York, who spoke on condition of anonymity, for good reason: Northwest required the replacements to sign confidentiality agreements as a condition of their employment, mechanics and officials with direct knowledge of the airline's action said.
Indeed, as the mechanic was speaking, security guards for Northwest, approached him and a New York Times reporter and reminded them of the confidentiality agreement, and the mechanic then cut the interview off.
The airline declined comment Tuesday; its chief executive, Douglas M. Steenland, did not respond to a request for an interview to discuss the use of replacements. The replacements have spent the last three months training under a $107 million contingency plan that the airline crafted in anticipation of a strike.
Many of them worked as airline mechanics before the industry's post-Sept. 11 jobs purge. Unable to find work with an airline, some were working in construction, others recently returned from Iraq as private contractors.
Resentment against the replacements runs high on the picket line here. "They're scabs - they care of nothing but themselves," said Bruce Bessell, 54, who has worked at Northwest for 14 years. "Society should shun" them, he said.
One mechanic, 38, who left United Airlines just before the September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, said he had some concerns about crossing a picket line.
But the $27 an hour Northwest is paying its replacements - $7 an hour more than he previously earned working for a private company - and his desire to return to the airline industry made up his mind.
"Nobody else is hiring, they're all laying off," said the former United mechanic.
Since deploying the replacements, including 1,200 mechanics, Northwest's operations have been operating fairly smoothly, although it saw significant delays as the strike got under way. It expects to cancel about 4 percent of its flights this week, double what the industry has experienced this year, the worst in the last five years for flight problems.
Not since a strike in 1989 by mechanics at Eastern Airlines, which eventually contributed to the airline's demise, has an airline tried to rely so heavily on replacements to keep its planes aloft.
But with airlines cutting more than 130,000 jobs this decade, in a bid to overcome $30 billion in losses, the mechanics' union "has picked the worst possible time" to strike over Northwest's demands, said David Gregory, professor of labor law at St. John's University in Queens.
On its Web site Tuesday, the union said it had begun collecting money to support the striking workers, which it said would be distributed at its discretion. If Northwest is successful, the union warned, "They will have effectively rewritten the book on how to bust a union; all other unionized groups in this country will be in danger."
The replacements do not see the strikers on the way to the airport because of the covered windows and the route. The buses enter through a back gate, away from the picket lines set up at the entrances to Northwest's sprawling terminal. But the strikers see their replacements and have taken pictures that have been posted on the Web.
Vance International, well known for providing security at struck companies, devised the airline's security procedures. In turn, Vance has subcontracted work to other companies, like the local firm that provides the guards here.
Although Northwest's pilots, flight attendants and machinists are not honoring the mechanics' picket line, replacements say they have not received a warm welcome. Members of those unions sometimes refuse to say hello, give directions or answer simple questions, like how to find an exit, the mechanics said.
A senior official at one national union, who asked not to be identified, said there was bound to be animosity between union members and replacements. "Nobody's happy about what happened," the union official said, adding that his organization was not about to tell its members to be nice to the replacements.
Such a cold reception is no surprise, however, in a town where the United Auto Workers union was forged nearly 70 years ago. The Hyatt Regency hotel where replacements are staying is a short drive from the site of the 1937 Battle of the Overpass, where Ford Motor guards bloodied Walter P. Reuther in an incident that generated support for the fledging union.
But the replacements said the snubs were not enough to deter them. They also face other challenges, some of them simple, like finding where the restrooms are or learning how to swipe a time card, which one mechanic said was made more difficult because a vandal had put glue in the card reader. As a result, Northwest is clocking each worker's time by hand, he said.
More serious are the repairs mechanics say they have had to make to jets the airline contends were damaged by the departing strikers. Northwest took about 60 planes out of service at times over the weekend to fix various problems. Its fleet has 432 planes.
Less critical, but more personal, is loneliness. The replacements, housed at the Hyatt at Northwest's expense, came here after three months of training in Tucson, learning to repair Northwest's planes.
Here, they spend off-hours in the hotel bar or camped out in each other's rooms, turning the place into the mechanics' equivalent of a college dorm. Some are already getting on their roommates' nerves.
"There's a lot of complaining: 'This guy drinks too much. This guy smokes. This guy watches T.V. at three in the morning,' " the former United mechanic said. The airline, he said, has been accommodating. "They need us, so they have to treat us nice," he said.
The Northwest strike is calling to mind one of the industry's most notorious disruptions, the two-year walkout by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Eastern that began in March 1989.
Some 8,500 mechanics and other workers represented by the union struck over cuts sought by the airline, then operating under bankruptcy protection. Eastern immediately deployed 7,400 replacement workers, including 1,100 licensed mechanics. Pilots and flight attendants, who initially honored picket lines, were back to work by Thanksgiving.
The mechanics remained on strike as the airline sold routes, cut service and eliminated jobs. Eventually, Eastern ceased flying in 1991, having never reached a settlement with the machinists.
As at Eastern, union officials contend things will eventually deteriorate at Northwest as the strike wears on. "Northwest's operations are under pressure, and NWA is attempting to paint a much brighter picture than exists," the union said in an update to members Tuesday.
But the former United mechanic said his fellow replacements felt the mechanics' union had miscalculated by staging the walkout. "We said, 'they're not that stupid; they aren't going to lose their pensions, lose their seniority, lose their whatever,' " he said.
Northwest's ability to operate, at least thus far, has proved "they can be replaced - they thought they couldn't," he said.