Must have been my attitude giving me away. Like we say, peace in the Middle East, peace in Northern Ireland, reunite the Koreas and Chinas, peace at Northwest Airlines, probably in that order. It is hard to walk away from a fight that you believe in and that has affected your livelyhood.
“keep the airline going for weeks by defering and no fault found entries.” So pencil whipping by management is acceptable if it keeps the airplanes flying during a strike? Charming concept. I believe my co-workers from Eastern saw what happens to managers that are caught doing that. Hopefully events at Alaska Airlines will give people pause before putting false ink to paper.
Our line managers are required to have A&P certificates, so theoretically they could fill in for us, but a closer look reveals a few facts that get in the way of a good story, as far as having management keeping the operation going during a strike.
We average around 30 mechanics and R&Es (electrical, avionics) per manager. Management has had very little actual floor experience since we went to “electric” airplanes. We also fly a fossilized fleet that needs a lot of love and care. We borrow a lot of parts from other airlines, of which most are unionized. We run a slim operation as far as staffing. The pilots are sympathetic and have contract language that allows them to honor our picket lines, if they decide to. The pilots also have a safety committee to assure the airplanes are being maintained properly. Outside vendors have dropped us as customers due to our tendency to “nickel and dime” them on contracts while other operators will pay more for their airplanes to be maintained. There is a shortage of aircraft mechanics in the US. The shareholders are getting upset.
My conclusion is that the airline would not be able to operate very long during a strike, but we still would be out for about two or three weeks, which is hard to make up for.
Our view of what has transpired is that in our situation, labor had the upper hand on management, which I guess the rules do not allow, hence the PEB to keep us from bending the company over the table and achieving pay rates that allow our wages to catch up to and pass inflation from over the last fifteen years. We would also like to punish the company for their stalling while we were kept at a lower pay rate. The company had four and a half years of discount labor costs at our expense. We are the bad boys of both the US airline industry and the airline unions, so outside forces have an interest in our failing to achieve our goals.
Keep in mind that we are craftsmen, we like to give our work the personal touch. If we have to kill the company to stand up for our principles, so be it. We’ll just roll our tool boxes to the next company and continue to fight anyone that tries to push us around. Our tools work well on cars, motorcycles, boats and airplanes, so what have we got to lose? We have drawn our line.