IAM Says If You Can't Beat 'Em... Ask Them To Join YOUR Union

In just over eight months, replacement mechanics hired at Northwest Airlines to fill in for striking members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association have gone from being oft-maligned pariahs, to themselves being courted by AMFA-rival International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers -- the current ground workers union at the airline.

The Detroit Free Press reports the union has circulated a petition among 275 mechanics who work at Detroit Metro Airport, requesting signatures in order to bring about an election to give those mechanics the chance to vote in the IAM as their union. The mechanics were brought in last August to replace striking members of AMFA.

"It's needed. There has to be some sort of security or protection, whether it's job security ... or wages or work rules," said Stephen Gordon, president of the union's Local 141. "The ripple effect will bring stability to other labor organizations on the Northwest property by having some sort of solidarity with one another."

That may not sit well with AMFA, who technically has the right to bargain for the workers, too. That's not something the union is likely to do, though, after having publicly insulting all replacement mechanics, as well as its own members who later crossed the picket line.

Nevertheless, AMFA does not plan to sit idly by as another union steps into the ongoing Northwest Airlines mechanics miasma, according to AMFA Local 5 president Dennis Sutton. He says the union remains actively involved in grievance proceedings for fired replacement workers, and wants to be involved in safety issues for Northwest mechanics.

Should IAM succeed in its bid to bring the currently union-less replacement mechanics under the union umbrella, it would return Northwest mechanics to the same union the airline's mechanics, as well as its plane cleaners, voted to leave eight years ago... for AMFA.

AMFA doesn't believe turnabout is fair play.

"We've always been quoted as being the raiding union," AMFA's Sutton said. "When a union's on strike, if you... do a card drive on them, that's wrong. That's raiding a union."

There is also the question of whether striking workers are eligible to vote in the election to oust AMFA -- a matter that current labor law remains unclear on, according to Neil Bernstein, a labor arbitrator and professor of law emeritus at Washington University.

As was reported in Aero-News last year, AMFA-represented mechanics at Northwest voted to strike the bankrupt carrier after reaching an impasse with management over Northwest's proposal to cut wages by more than 25 percent, as well as outsourcing some of the mechanic's work and laying off all unionized plane cleaners.

For its part, Northwest said through a spokesman that the company does not comment on union matters.

FMI: www.nwa.com, www.amfanatl.org, www.iamaw.org