Mechanics Face Doubt, Uncertainty On Picket Line

Donnie Smith has already lost his job once at Northwest Airlines Corp. When his mechanic's position was eliminated in Atlanta in 2002, he moved to the Washington area for the airline. The 54-year-old lead technician left his wife on their farm in Griffin, Ga., and took up residence in the basement of a house in Fort Washington.

Smith, who has 34 years with the company, just hopes he will still have his job a year from now, so he can make retirement at age 55.

"Can you believe a guy my age, living in a basement of a home?" Smith said on the picket line Saturday with other striking Northwest mechanics at Reagan National Airport. "I was that close to doing all those plans I had been working toward." He held his thumb and finger a half-inch apart.

Yesterday, Smith was back on the picket line, but he is making plans to return to the farm.

The striking mechanics and maintenance workers at National make up a tiny portion of the 4,400 union members who walked out Saturday morning after negotiations failed to achieve a compromise on jobs and wage cuts sought by the airline. Northwest has a small presence in the Washington area, accounting for just 4.8 percent of flights at National.

But the mechanics here, like their counterparts in larger contingents in Minneapolis, Detroit and elsewhere, are wondering what the future holds and how they will endure if the strike is prolonged. Northwest has replaced the union workers with mechanics laid off from other airlines, and it is unclear whether the strikers will lose their jobs permanently. The airline says it hopes to return to the negotiating table.

Smith doubts the airline will come to the table willing to bargain. "How can they consider the negotiations to be in good faith when they were hiring replacement mechanics 18 months ago, at least?" he said.

The strikers say the replacement workers have not had enough training to do their jobs properly.

"The public needs to know the safety has to be lessened" by replacing these mechanics with fill-ins, said Greg Kuhns, a lead technician from Warrenton who worked for Northwest since 1991. "It takes approximately five years to where they are well trained," he said.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said the agency has been monitoring the carrier's transition to replacement mechanics since Northwest began training for them. She said many of the replacement workers are certified mechanics.

"We're confident the aircraft aren't leaving the hangar until they are fixed and checked," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.

The mechanics and maintenance workers had their ranks cut in half in 2001. The airline sought to eliminate an additional 2,000 mechanics in the latest negotiations, cutting the payroll in half, the union said. On Saturday, 10 strikers turned up at National, slowly walking in a circle near the entrance to Terminal A. Nine were mechanics and one was an aircraft cleaner