Northwest Mechanic Strike Over

The Aircraft Mechanic Fraternal Association (AMFA) and Northwest Airlines (NWA) reached a tentative agreement on October 9, 2006, that, if approved by the membership, ends the 14-month strike.

The deal includes NWA withdrawing all protests against strikers receiving unemployment benefits; offering vacation accrual with a maximum 10 weeks severance pay for resignations or, as an alternative

for those strikers who elect to remain with the company with 2- year recall rights, vacation accrual with up to 5 weeks severance.

Since NWA shut the doors of its Minneapolis maintenance facility and contracted out janitorial and cabin cleaning jobs, few expect many of the 4400 original strikers to be recalled.

All 800 mechanics who crossed picket lines, mostly AMFA members, will remain working and cannot be displaced by strikers according to the tentative agreement.

It is a tragic end to a dismal chapter of failed AMFA leadership and strategy.

AMFA had no strike fund and, reflecting its separatist philosophy of mechanics acting alone, went on strike while the Pilots, Flight Attendants and Machinists' Union were still negotiating under pressures of bankruptcy court proceedings.

AMFA bolted ahead of all the other unions, characteristic of their often-stated mantra that "strength in numbers doesn't necessarily mean strength.
" This was the wisdom offered by AMFA Assistant National Director Steve MacFarlane on the eve of the August 2005 strike.

Underestimating solidarity with other unions on the property was only one of AMFA's strategic mistakes.

Extremely damaging to unity with other unions was AMFA's negotiating proposal that NWA take more concessions from IAM members and less from AMFA members.

As reported by Robert Roach Jr., IAMAW General Vice- President Transportation: "AMFA, as an institution, has proposed and is actively advocating, that Northwest Airlines demand
$150,000,000 more [from IAM members] in concessions than the $107,000,000 Northwest has requested from our membership."

While AMFA supporters dismiss these claims as slander, most 'unskilled' airline workers who have been the target of AMFA's scorn since their formation in 1962, are not at all surprised by
AMFA's breach of solidarity at NWA during the 2005 summer contract negotiations.

In fact, this breakdown in solidarity is exactly what occurred only a few months earlier in an AMFA settlement with United Airlines that directly led to 550 IAM jobs being contracted out.

As a result of complex legal proceedings between AMFA and the IAM over the jobs in question, AMFA negotiators demanded and received from UAL financial 'credits' for this IAM job loss;
thus increasing the hardship on fellow workers, IAM members, but reducing concessions of AMFA mechanics.

The whole AMFA experience has been a bitter, devastating blow to airline workers. It has led to division and defeat by an organization that claimed to be more militant and democratic than
established unions but was not.

None of AMFA's major claims have stood up; they are neither more democratic nor more militant than traditional unions they seek to replace.

AMFA suffers from the same political weaknesses as other unions only compounded by active attempts to split unions and separate 'skilled workers' from other employee groups.

Less than 3 years ago when AMFA won an election to represent 9000 UAL mechanics, AMFA's major campaign slogan was that they would never negotiate concessions.

None of these claims have stood up; during NWA concession bargaining for example, AMFA members were never given an opportunity to vote on the
'Final and Best Offer' by NWA before the strike was called in August 2005 and 'rank and file observers' were barred from the recent negotiations with NWA on the tentative agreement.

Only 10 years ago, AMFA's divisive sales pitch attracted a measly 439 total members, picking up steam only during recent years of devastating rounds of airline concession bargaining.

After only a few short years with a significant membership, their numbers have dwindled, the organization is in crisis and the whole project can be declared a miserable failure.

Instead of division into smaller,craft unions, we need to confront employers with unity. 'One Airline, One Union' is the answer to AMFA's retrograde separatism.

Perhaps some misled radicals are infatuated with AMFA's talk of more militancy and democracy. Most airline workers are not.

AMFA's program is nothing more than elitism starkly and tragically revealed in the failed 'go-it-alone' strike strategy at NWA that in the end proved to be just as arrogant as it was misguided.

Not surprisingly, lessons are being drawn by AMFA mechanics themselves who are abandoning the sinking ship in droves. There is an active AMFA decertification drive at the United Airlines
San Francisco Maintenance Base, the only remaining viable AMFA unit in the country.

AMFA leaders are feeling the heat. Several months ago in an election, 12,000 NWA Flight Attendants, ousted their AMFA-originated union in favor of the Association of Flight Attendants,
AFA-CWA, AFL-CIO.

There are other signs of internal problems. AMFA recently fired its founding national attorneys, moved its national headquarters thousands of miles away from where its aging National Director resides,
declared itself to be in major debt and announced,in a huge reversal of direction, that it is openly investigating affiliations and mergers with the AFL-CIO.

Sadly, lessons of unity and solidarity had to be relearned at the cost of thousands of jobs and disrupted lives.