The strike by mechanics at Northwest Airlines demonstrates how far airline executives are willing to go to cut costs, destroy jobs, and break promises to workers and Minnesota taxpayers, the state AFL-CIO says.

"Northwest is just a bad employer," said Minnesota AFL-CIO President Ray Waldron. "All you have to do is look at the record. When times were tough and they came to Minnesota to ask for money to keep them in business, everybody came to their aid.

"Taxpayers came to their rescue. All those employees in unions or in associations gave concessions over the years. Yet the company continues to demand more."

Mechanics and other maintenance workers at Northwest went on strike at 11:01 p.m. Aug. 19, after a 30-day cooling off period imposed by the National Mediation Board failed to produce a contract.

Northwest, which acknowledges it spent 18 months preparing for a strike, immediately brought in 1,500 strikebreakers and outsourced even more work. For its private goon squad, it hired Vance Security ? which is on the AFL-CIO's national boycott list and notorious for its picket-line tactics during strikes against Detroit newspapers, Midwest Caterpillar plants and elsewhere.

Trail of broken promises
Northwest's maintenance employees, who are represented by the deliberately independent Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, say the airline gave them no option but to walk. Strikers say that regardless of Northwest's ongoing financial losses, there is no way they could agree to a contract that cuts wages 25 percent and guarantees that more than half of them lose their jobs.

"They had no intention of signing a contract," said Dewey Hogenson, of Eagan, an engine shop inspector with 24 years of service at Northwest. "It's just two words ? union busting."

"I'm willing to take a pay cut ? I see the company's hurting," said Bill Roberts, of Eagan, an engine inspector with 18 years at Northwest.

But after workers bailed Northwest out in 1986, then again in 1993, the airline reneged on compensation they owed workers for the concessions they granted, said Ken Schroeder, of Brooklyn Park. "That's this company. That's the way they do things.

"The upper management treats you like dirt. They have never tried to appreciate the working people down on the floor," said Schroeder, who is a general inspector with 22 years' experience.

"They take and they take and they take and they take," Roberts said, "and at some point we've just got to stand up for ourselves. When's enough enough?"

Striking mechanics Dewey Hogenson (left) and Ken Schroeder ? who between them have 46 years of service at Northwest ? picket near Highway 5 and Post Road. Union Advocate photo

Eliminating more than half the jobs
Northwest's new business model of eliminating thousands of good jobs comes despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies and loans from the state of Minnesota ? arrangements that included job guarantees for the state.

Currently, the Pawlenty administration is pushing an $862 million expansion proposal for Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that would provide Northwest a virtual monopoly of gates at the main Lindburgh terminal.

Yet since 2001, Northwest has eliminated more than 10,000 jobs, including 5,368 mechanic, cleaner and custodian jobs. That leaaves only 4,427 maintenance workers in the bargaining unit. Northwest's final proposal cuts jobs in half again, strikers said, including eliminating all cleaners and custodians.

Further, Northwest promises job security to only 80 percent of the mechanics who remain ? meaning that since 2001, Northwest could go from roughly 9,800 maintenance workers to only about 2,000.

"The backed us into a corner," said Janet White, a custodian who has been with the company 30 years, dating back to Southern Airways. "This is the only recourse that we have. I feel like these guys are striking for my job."

White, who still commutes from Atlanta, said she's only 5-1/2 months from retirement and doesn't understand the airline's hard-nosed tactics, including its refusal to offer buy-outs to employees like her.

"We know we have to take a pay cut. None of us had a problem with that. But they wanted to take everything else. Why?"

Losses pile up
Northwest says it needs to cut costs among maintenance workers by $176 million ? part of the $1.2 billion in concessions it wants from workers overall. The airline has lost $3.6 billion since 2001, which it blames on the recession, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the SARS scare in Asia, the Iraq war, and soaring fuel prices.

Despite flying at more than 90 percent of capacity, Northwest continues to lose $4 million a day.

Northwest, though, finds the money to reward executives and to try to break the union, strikers point out. For example, in early August, four top executives cashed in $1.4 million worth of "phantom stock."

Yet the perception lingers among the public that it is the mechanics who make too much money.

"People on the news see me, and they see my work cohorts," Roberts said. "They don't see my wife, they don't see my children. They just see us ? oh, we're overpaid buffoons.

"We're licensed mechanics," he said, "federally licensed. If we do something wrong, it's our license, our job. It's our career."

Ken Schroeder, a general inspector with 22 years of service at Northwest, and Janet White, a custodian with 30 years at the airline, say strikers had no choice but to walk out. Union Advocate photo

Going out fighting?
Roberts says he doubts that Northwest's plan to rely on outsourcing and replacement workers will succeed. "There ain't no way in the world anybody can come in ? I don't care if they've got 15 years' experience at another airline ? you've got to learn Northwest's system of how they do things," he said. "And you're not going to do that in a few days of training or on the job. It's going to be impossible."

At this point, strikers feel it's all or nothing, Schroeder said. Personally, he doubts he'll ever work at Northwest again. "That's fine with me," he said. "This is the way I go. Everybody goes together."

"It's unfortunate ? I've been here 30 years," White said, her voice quivering. "This has been my whole life. And it hurts."

Adapted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@mtn.org