Support grows for cleaners and mechanics

Every day the local, national and international solidarity with the striking Northwest Airlines mechanics and cleaners becomes more visible. At the same time, Northwest is renewing demands for huge cuts in its contract negotiations with the unions representing pilots, flight attendants and other workers.

On the second Saturday of the strike, 1,000 supporters rallied at the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association—AMFA —strike headquarters near the Minne apolis-St. Paul airport.

Speakers included Steel Workers District 11 Director Dave Foster.

One of 50 members there from the Machin ists union told the crowd: “We are all the same. The company hates every one of us and wants to bust every single one of the unions on the property ... . If we don’t stand together, we are all dead. That’s why I don’t cross.”

Elected officials who spoke, including the mayor of Minneapolis, pointed to the public interest in actions by a company that has received tax breaks as well as a monopoly at the airport.

The Strike Solidarity Committee plans additional actions, including picketing local hotels that Northwest uses to house “replacement mechanics.” (www.workdayminnesota.org)

In Detroit, an Aug. 27 “ox roast” fund raiser was organized in only a few days by the network built 10 years ago during the 1995 Detroit newspaper strike. The event brought in $3,000.

After the Electrical Workers Local 58 had reluctantly pulled its hall, forced by an agreement worked out at the national level by the Machinists and Electrical Workers union, strikers and supporters filled the Anchor Bar and adjacent meeting room, overflowing into McCarthy’s, another pro-labor watering hole down the street.

At the gathering, strikers, union officials and activists exchanged information and planned for Labor Day outreach and other strike support.

Northwest’s attack on the mechanics and cleaners of AMFA resonates with workers in both the public and private sectors, who face the same cuts in jobs, pay and benefits.

Solidarity!

In an auto parts warehouse, UAW members collected a shop-floor donation. A delegation from that job site brought pizzas to the strike headquarters, and picketed at the airport in an Aug. 27 downpour so heavy it backed up street drains.

In an Aug. 28 statement of support, Doro-Chiba, a railway workers’ union in Japan, noted the global character of NWA’s attacks: “You attract the attention of many workers in Japan who face similar attacks ... . The Northwest Airlines are depriving workers of the very right to live by coercing an extravagant concession. The deliberate preparation of scabs clearly shows that the attack is aimed at destruction of the very existence of the union ... .

“Also in Japan we face appalling circumstances. A criminal policy of privatization and deregulation resulted in a railway accident, which claimed the lives of 107 passengers at once. Union busting, massive casualization of workers, and destruction of wage, pension and health-care systems are rampant also in Japan. Therefore, an attack on you is an attack on all the workers in Japan. We will fight back any possible attacks and continue our all-out struggle in Japan in solidarity with your strike.”

In its Aug. 21 support statement, representatives of the Netherlands-based Aircraft Engineers International said they are extremely concerned “about the mass redundancies [layoffs] of qualified mechanics at Northwest Airlines, and we are further concerned as this trend seems to increase everywhere… and the negative effect on flight safety in general.”

The Central Labor Council of Alameda County, Calif., the International Long shore and Warehouse Union and the FAA Safety Inspectors’ Union immediately supported the mechanics’ and cleaners’ strike.

UPS pilots said they would not fly North west cargo.

Northwest is now turning its knives on the Professional Flight Attendants Associ ation, which represents 10,000 Northwest workers. The airline bosses’ ultimatum would outsource more than half the jobs and cut pay an average of 20 percent.

In 2006 at the latest, NWA also wants to eliminate 1,181 pilots and cut pay by 22 percent. (Detroit Free Press, Aug. 30)

The AMFA strike at Northwest confirms what the Mission Statement of the Million Worker March Movement put forth last year. The MWMM pointed to the vast reservoir of potential support that can be mobilized to turn around the devastation on the job and in the communities:

“The vast majority of working Amer icans are under siege. Social services and essential funding for schools, libraries, affordable housing and health care are slashed and eliminated.

“Decent paying jobs are disappearing through outsourcing and privatization whose real purpose is to break unions and roll back the gains of one hundred years of struggle. Sweatshops and starvation wages are imposed on workers across the world and deployed against workers at home to undermine our jobs and our benefits. ...

“The time has come to mobilize working people for our own agenda. Let us end subservience to the power of the privileged few and their monopoly of the political process in America. ... Let us forge together a social, economic and political movement for working people. We are the many. The secretive and corrupt who control our lives are the rapacious few.”