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Northwest Employees Get Little Support
Replacement mechanics work on the main landing gear of jet at Detroit's airport. The AMFA pulled Northwest mechanics away from an AFL-CIO union in 1999.
(By Paul Sancya -- Associated Press)
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"I think the mechanics have shown a lot of courage but not much longer-term strategy here," said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "The kind of outreach that is necessary to have a much broader base, they really didn't do."
As it became clear AMFA might strike, it asked other unions for support -- with little success. The IAM's general vice president, Robert Roach Jr., wrote AMFA's leader, O.V. Delle-Femine, saying, "It is about time that AMFA recognizes that it cannot win a major labor dispute standing in isolation." He went on: "IAM members will not be duped into standing with AMFA. AMFA has never honored an IAM picket line."
AMFA received similar cold responses from other unions.
However, the union and its strikers are receiving other kinds of support, said Steve MacFarlane, AMFA spokesman. "We're getting a tremendous amount of help from all the other unions individually. We're getting all kinds of information from our fellow workers" who remain on the job, he said. "We never expected the others to honor our picket line, but of course we would have welcomed that," he said. "But we never calculated that as a part of our strategy."
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has spoken out in support of AMFA. "I ask all ILWU members to do everything in their power to help these workers in the struggle as if it were your own," James Spinosa, international president, said in a letter to the union's locals.
The employees and staff of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters will not be flying Northwest Airlines. But the group is not organizing a formal boycott, and its members are making their own decisions about how they will respond, said Leigh Strope, a Teamsters spokeswoman. Not flying Northwest is "a show of respect for the workers at Northwest Airlines rather than a sign of support for AMFA," she said Friday in an e-mailed statement.
In the long run, the lack of support for AMFA may have more of an effect than unions anticipate, according to some labor watchers.
"If the workers don't stand together, Northwest may be able to destroy this union because it is not a big union. It may then go on to the flight attendants and baggage handlers," Craver said. "And if they are able to get away with it, it will embolden all the airlines. And worse yet, it will spread to other unions in other industry where they demand huge concessions or else."
