Teamsters President Concerned With Foreign Shops

Will outsourcing be the final answer for Delta Air Lines after an anticipated merger with Northwest Airlines Corp? Not so much, says Delta, which stresses it plans to keep most major service work in-house for 2008.

Bringing the issue to the table on Monday was Teamsters President James Hoffa, who fears a Delta/NWA merger might launch an increase in the amount of aircraft maintenance work being performed overseas.

"Northwest does an extensive amount of outsourcing overseas," Hoffa told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The potential of more jobs being sent to Asia "is a key concern that should be addressed" by a regulatory review in a merger situation, as well as the levels of safety standards, he added.

Atlanta-based Delta admonishes such concerns of maintenance work scheduled to be performed overseas, because they currently profit from taking on maintenance work for other carriers. "Delta senior leadership has made very clear its commitment to growing its in-house maintenance business by focusing on high-skill, high-value maintenance work," said Delta spokeswoman Chris Kelly. "Last year, Delta TechOps brought in more than $377 million in revenue, and 2008 is looking to be even better."

The Teamsters say they're concerned with safety and regulatory issues with outsourcing. The union does not represent workers at either Northwest or Delta, but notes several major US airlines spend two-thirds of the dollars on contract repairs at foreign shops, including facilities in Mexico, China, the Philippines, and El Salvador.

According to an MIT analysis of Transportation Department data, Delta spent $467 million on outsourced work in 2006, while Northwest spent $647 million -- both rising from $271 and $261 respectively, in 2004. Hoffa -- and several others -- say this poses a threat to traveler safety, because hiring standards in other countries do not include the same standards of background or substance testing.

"Aircraft mechanics should all be held to a single standard whether they repair airplanes in Beijing or San Francisco," Hoffa said. "Unfortunately, the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't have the staff or funding" to regulate overseas work to US standards.

The FAA noted via spokeswoman Alison Duquette "the amount of work outsourced definitely has been increasing," adding statistics to back up that assertion aren't available.

"The standards for domestic and foreign repair stations are the same," Duquette said. "The FAA has not seen a problem with outsourced maintenance."

Paul Bradley, a United Airlines mechanic at Dulles International, begs to differ. He says maintenance work performed on United jets in Beijing has been substandard, to say the least.

"Once the planes come back [from Beijing], we spend two or three weeks trying to fix the things they screwed up overseas," said Bradley, who has urged United's mechanics to switch their representation from the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, to the Teamsters.

FMI: www.delta.com, www.teamsters.org, www.amfanational.org