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U.S. BUSINESS NEWS
Using Temps
Proves Potent
At Northwest
By AMY MERRICK and KRIS MAHER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 29, 2005; Page B1

A little over a week into the first major strike at a U.S. airline in seven years, the battle between Northwest Airlines and its mechanics union is shaping up to be a case study on the potency of substitute workers in today's labor market.

On one side is the nation's No. 4 airline, financially hemorrhaging and so determined to wrest 25% wage cuts from its workers that it spent tens of millions of dollars and 18 months preparing for a strike that might never have materialized.


On the other side is a small union that grew over the past decade largely by fomenting dissent at rival unions and then nabbing the discontents. Even though it alienated its labor brethren, the mechanics union was convinced it could cripple the airline in short order, partly by undermining public confidence in Northwest's safety. Union officials have derided the substitute mechanics as "understaffed and undertrained" workers who "won't even know where the tools are."

But with people fretting about job security -- particularly American jobs being outsourced abroad -- this strike highlights the emergence of a new threat in labor disputes: the homegrown replacement worker more beholden to the pocketbook than to any lofty principles of organized labor.

Replacement workers have always been used to beat union strikes. In the early part of the 20th century, employers sometimes took advantage of the animosity between immigrant groups, hiring workers from one group to replace strikers from another. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan stepped in to keep the public flying, famously firing thousands of striking air-traffic controllers and dispatching replacements to the control towers.

The Northwest battle is being closely watched, though, as the labor movement finds itself at a crossroads, trying to stem several decades of declining membership across broad areas of the work force, as well as internal divisiveness.

After eight days, Northwest is clearly winning -- and may well break the strike if things keep going its way. Northwest said Friday that its flight-cancellation rates and the number of planes out of service have recovered to levels it considers acceptable. On Friday, the airline was able to complete about 98% of its schedule. A chart it provided yesterday showed normal operations.

"We're very comfortable with where we sit right now," says Andy Roberts, Northwest's executive vice president of operations. And in recent days, the company has been vocal about the fact it is considering taking on the temporary workers permanently, adding that striking mechanics are still welcome to come back to work if they accept Northwest's new terms.


...continued at http://online.wsj.com/article_...,,SB112528075812925272,00.html