BY MARY MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. -In a record voter turnout some 85
percent of the 27,000 members of the International
Association of Machinists (IAM) who work at Northwest
Airlines voted July 29 on the company's contract offer and
rejected it with between 66 percent and 84 percent opposed in
the four main work groups organized by the IAM.
These four groups - representing mechanics, cleaners, custodians, ramp workers, stock clerks, and passenger service workers - also voted to authorize a strike against the company, if necessary, by 18,835 to 3,303. A fifth work group representing 140 Flight Kitchen personnel voted the contract up by 34 to 20. In a press release issued after the vote was publicized, company spokesman Doug McKeen, Northwest Airlines, Vice President for Labor Relations, said "We are disappointed with the [IAM] District 143 results."
The company had tried to present a upbeat picture of its tentative contract offer. IAM officials had also campaigned for ratification, citing a 14 percent pay raise over four years and a "retro signing bonus" as highlights of an "industry leading" contract. But workers pointed out that after a decade of concessions to the airline, the wage raise and bonus offer amount to only 1.5 percent per year for the 10-year period between the last raise workers had in 1991 and the end of the four-year contract.
Proposed work rule changes also caused concern for many workers. These include the company's intent to continue to "farm out" work previously performed by union members, lack of layoff protection for some 1,500 workers hired after October 1996, and the company's plan to use part-time workers for up to 31 hours a week with no medical or other benefits, except five annual paid holidays.
Terry Tindall, 32, a machinist at Northwest's Atlanta maintenance base who has worked a year and a half for the company, told the Militant, "My biggest problem with the contract is that I wasn't protected from layoffs. I'm one of those hired after the deadline."
The Machinists vote means Northwest will have to go back to the bargaining table with the union and reconsider its offer or face a potential strike.
Lewis Guy, an IAM member who has worked on the ramp at Washington National Airport for five years, said, "The tentative agreement was voted down because it benefited the company more than it benefited us. We've just sent a strong message to the company that their divide-and-conquer strategy did not work and nothing can separate us from our feelings against this contract. Now we have to give 100 percent support to the pilots if they strike because whatever the company does to the pilots they are going to do to us."
Guy was referring to the 6,200 pilots at Northwest organized in the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) who, after two years of failed government-mediated negotiations with the company, began a 30-day "cooling off" period on July 29. At the end of the 30 days on August 29 the pilots would be free to strike.
Such constraints on the pilots' actions stem from the Federal Railway Labor Act, which acts to prolong contract negotiations for airline and railroad workers with endless government-mediated talks and then thwart workers' ability to strike. The governors of Minnesota and six other states are already lobbying publicly on behalf of Northwest Airlines for government intervention to stop a pilots strike. That was what President William Clinton did to shut down a strike by the American Airlines pilots within minutes in February 1997.
Ten thousand flight attendants organized by the Teamsters union are also in a contract battle with Northwest. They have been fighting for a new contract for nearly two years and have called union support rallies at 10 airports on August 7, in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco.
Meanwhile, in a related development, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), a company-minded outfit that has for years attempted to split off mechanics and cleaners from the IAM, has stepped up its campaign against the Machinists union. AMFA declared on July 22 it has collected enough pro-AMFA signature cards from mechanics and cleaners at Northwest to ask the government National Labor Relations Board for an election to decertify the IAM.
The Atlanta maintenance base at Northwest where Terry Tindall works has been a center of AMFA's campaign. Commenting on this development to the Militant, Tindall said, "I feel AMFA is not looking out for our best interests. They're coming in hard now when we're negotiating a contract, trying to separate us. That left a bad taste in my mouth."
Mary Martin is a member of IAM Local 1759 at Northwest in Washington, D.C. IAM members Arlene Rubenstein and Mike Italie in Atlanta and Jeff Jones in Minneapolis contributed to this article.