Union leaders at Northwest Airlines pledged Wednesday to stick together as never before to save jobs and fight the airline's strategy of using bankruptcy as an excuse to outsource thousands of workers.

"There's no sense saving Northwest Airlines if we can't save our jobs," Capt. Mark McClain told several hundred workers during a rally at the Ramada Inn and Thunderbird Conference Center.

"Northwest Airlines is not management's airline ? it's our airline," said McClain, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association at Northwest, who sounded a theme repeated in different ways throughout the rally.

"All of us have been here many, many years. We're not going to save Northwest Airlines for management, we're not going to save it for the board, we're not going to save it for the investors. We're going to save it for all of us."

Hundreds of Northwest Airlines workers stood shoulder to shoulder at Wednesday's rally, including Pam Schroeder (left) and Lisa Stager (right), both of Machinists Local Lodge 1833. Union Advocate photo

Building common strategies
Pilots, ground workers and flight attendants stood shoulder to shoulder at the rally to send a message of solidarity ? the most visible demonstration of union cooperation at the airline in a dozen years.

"We saw what happened on this property with a more go-it-alone strategy," McClain said, making a not-so-veiled reference to the ongoing strike by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, a strike in which other unions have not honored picket lines of the independent union of mechanics, cleaners and custodians.

"That's certainly not going to work," McClain said. "All of us sticking together, working together, is going to be paramount for us to get through this environment."

The speeches are more than rhetoric, union leaders say: The pilots, Machinists Air Transport District 143, Professional Flight Attendants Association and smaller unions are meeting regularly as a "labor advisory council" to devise common strategies at the bargaining table and beyond.

All face outsourcing
The three large unions continue in negotiations with Northwest, facing a Jan. 16 deadline to reach agreements that their members can approve. Northwest says that if the unions don't agree to new contracts, it will ask the bankruptcy court to rip up existing contracts, allowing the airline to impose its will on workers.

If that happens, unions say, they have the right to strike, potentially shutting the airline down, perhaps for good.

In its bankruptcy filings, Northwest says it wants $997 million in concessions from the three unions. The airline's plan includes additional job cuts, additional wage and benefit cuts, and extensive outsourcing. For example, it wants non-union pilots to fly planes that carry fewer than 100 passengers. It wants non-union ground crews at most airports outside of Minneapolis-St. Paul and Detroit. It wants only foreign flight attendants on all international flights.

Management has decided "to beat concessions out of the employees who ? have spent years building and bringing success to Northwest Airlines," said PFAA vice president Doug Moe. Executives, meanwhile, continue to find ways "to justify bonuses and rewards for mediocre leadership," he said.

Who can do a better job?
Speakers said it is up to workers to support each other and save Northwest.

"We are workers, no matter who or what you do for Northwest," said Bobby DePace, president of the Machinists at Northwest. "We are workers, and we will stand united and we will stand together."

Executives have been "morally criminal" in how they've handled the airline, said Steve Hunter, secretary-treasurer for the Minnesota AFL-CIO. "When you place corporate greed over the lives and the families of your workers, that is immoral and it is wrong."

Hunter called the airline's executives "incompetent" and said the flying public should "thank God ? that all of you do your jobs better than they do theirs."

He urged workers "to come together as a family.? Hold each other up, keep each other strong, be there for each other."

"Don't take the frustrations of this environment out on each other," McClain said. "Keep Northwest Airlines running as best we can. And we'll run Northwest Airlines ? in spite of management."

Michael Kuchta edits the Union Advocate, the official publication of the St. Paul Trades & Labor Assembly. E-mail him at advocate@stpaulunions.org or check out the Assembly website, www.stpaulunions.org