Friday, July 22, 2005

Northwest outlines its mechanics' strike plans

Detroit's largest air carrier shifts maintenance to outside contractors and trains replacement workers.

By Joshua Freed / Associated Press

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MINNEAPOLIS -- With a possible mechanics strike looming, Northwest Airlines Corp. said it has nearly finished training replacement workers and that it has already begun shifting more maintenance work to outside contractors.

Northwest, the nation's fourth-largest airline, has vowed to keep flying if mechanics strike at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 20, when a 30-day cooling-off period ends. A strike would hit it during the busy summer travel months.

The largest carrier at Detroit Metropolitan Airport released new details of its strike plan on Thursday as part of an employee newsletter being distributed this week.

Northwest said only a small percentage of its planes would need heavy maintenance between August and November. It also said it has already moved Airbus A330 and Boeing 747 line maintenance -- work done in a few hours -- to outside vendors, and that its Dutch airline partner KLM has taken on "an expanded maintenance role."

It said 84 percent of its replacement mechanics and outside contractors have at least five years of experience, and 64 percent have at least 10 years of experience. It said it has not changed its hiring standards for the replacement workers.

"We do not and will not dispatch an aircraft if we are not confident that it is in a safe operating condition," vice president for operations Andy Roberts said in the newsletter.

Mechanics have derided Northwest's plan to keep flying. Northwest's fleet includes DC-9s and DC-10s, some of which are more than 30 years old.

"They won't even know where the tools are," said O.V. Delle-Femine, national director of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association said on Wednesday when the strike deadline was set. "Our mechanics grew up with these vintage planes and know all of their idiosyncrasies and how to keep them flying reliably. Many of the replacements will be learning how to work on these aircraft for the first time."

Also Thursday, Northwest flight attendants said they sued the airline, demanding that it stop training replacement flight attendants on Northwest flights in preparation for a strike. It said the new flight attendants aren't yet employees and shouldn't be allowed to perform flight attendant work.

Northwest said it would respond to the lawsuit later Thursday. But a July 5 letter from Vice President for Labor Relations Julie Hagen Showers included with the lawsuit said the attendants contract doesn't apply to the trainees because they have not been promised a job and because the training is different from the usual flight attendant training.