People Before Profit blog

EDITORIAL: Support the Northwest Airline strikers

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:52:00 +0000

“If we had only stopped them at PATCO” became a common labor refrain in the union-busting years of the Reagan administration. Most in labor will now acknowledge that the lack of full labor solidarity was a key factor in the defeat of the PATCO (air traffic controllers) union. It opened the door to years of ferocious corporate and government attack on unions.

Today the strike of mechanics at Northwest Airlines has the feel of PATCO repeated. PATCO was in the doghouse with much of labor because it was one of the few unions to endorse Reagan for president. Similarly the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), which represents the mechanics at Northwest, has a cloud over it because of its raiding of other unions in the airline industry, and because of its craft union approach.

But regardless, the class struggle put these workers on the front line for all union members.

Defeat of the AMFA workers at Northwest would intensify the attacks on all the airline unions and indeed on all unions. This is a classic tactic on the part of corporate America. They are taking full advantage of the divisions in labor. They will attack what they see as labor’s weakest links.

It is in the interest of all labor and the progressive movements that the Northwest strikers win and stop the destruction of their union. This is truly a case of “an injury to one is an injury to all.” The Northwest strikers need our full support and solidarity.

The strikers need union locals and rank and file committees to help on their picket lines. They need local support committees to warn the flying public not to fly an airline that uses substandard scab mechanics to service its planes. The strikers need us all to spread the word and to stand in solidarity.

Nothing better illustrates the power of unity and the weakness of going it alone than a strike.

To help out you can contact a local strike committee at www.amfanatl.org.

Cintas workers win environmental cleanup

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:48:00 +0000

BRANFORD, Conn. — In a groundbreaking agreement, the Cintas Corp. has signed a pact with the state of Connecticut to stop using detergents which contain ingredients known as APEs (alkyphenol ethoxylates). APEs are toxic to fish and are potentially linked to cancer.

Environmental activist Kiki Kennedy, a Branford resident, hailed the agreement during an Aug. 11 hearing conducted by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). “This is the first time any government regulatory body has taken a stand on APEs, which are fish endocrine destructors,” she said.

Kennedy thanked the workers at Cintas for signing a petition that brought public attention to the problem. The workers who had complained about the effects of the chemicals on their health and on the environment had been singled out for harassment and intimidation.

Unite Here intervened in the DEP administration process on the workers’ behalf, and the union’s intervention proved decisive to winning the agreement. Cintas workers in Branford and nationally have been seeking union representation with Unite Here for several years.

The state is also mandating proper training in the event of a chemical spill. There have been two spills from the Cintas plant into the Branford River.

Michael Fitts of ConnectiCosh testified that to his knowledge the workers are often not trained with Spanish interpretation and are not clearly informed of the dangers involved. Many of the workers are recent immigrants from Latin America.

Thanking the DEP for requiring training on cleanup of chemical spills, Carlos Santiago, a Unite Here member who works at AmeriPride Laundry in Hartford, explained that his union contract includes a bilingual training program on cleanup of spills. “I strongly encourage Cintas to meet with the workers to determine what is needed to train them properly,” he said.

When co-worker Renaldo Alvarado protested Cintas’ methods of intimidation, his testimony was cut off by the hearing officers.

Speaking on behalf of the Connecticut Sierra Club, John Calendrelli agreed that the phaseout of APEs should be a national model.

The settlement requires Cintas to pay a penalty of $450,000 for over 900 violations of its pollution permit. Connecticut’s mandatory action on APE chemicals is the first in this country, although their use is banned in the European Union.

joelle.fishman @ pobox.com

Plan to save labor unity

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:59:00 +0000

AFL-CIO proposes solidarity charters for disaffiliated locals in CLCs and state federations

WASHINGTON (PAI) — The AFL-CIO created a procedure to let locals from unions that left the federation — the Service Employees, Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers and the Carpenters — stay in state federations and local Central Labor Councils.

The proposal, which AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney will submit to the executive council, lets those locals that want to stay in the state feds and CLCs seek “Solidarity Charters” to do so.

The Solidarity Charter proposal responds to two developments since the Teamsters, SEIU and UFCW left the AFL-CIO at the end of July: Financial and personnel problems that hit the state feds and CLCs, and a desire, Sweeney said, by some locals from the departing unions to stay within those state and local structures.

The Solidarity Charter proposal says that besides paying regular dues based on the number of members they have — just as they did before — the locals from the non-AFL-CIO unions would pay a special 10 percent “solidarity fee” to the labor council or state federation to help offset the cost of services and mobilization systems provided by the national AFL-CIO and supported by its affiliated unions.

The fund and fees are designed to help avoid a crisis facing some state feds and CLCs. Some received at least 40 percent of their dues from locals of the three unions that left the federation in July. The Carpenters left four years ago.

The federation’s proposal also put some limits on participation in state feds and CLCs by members of locals whose parent unions are now out of the AFL-CIO. It banned such members from serving as future state fed and CLC officers, for example. Present unionists in such positions would stay in them through the end of their terms.

“Locals who receive Solidarity Charters will need to honor basic principles of solidarity. They will agree not to raid their brother and sister unions, participate fully in the local political mobilization efforts, and support other working people in their area who are on strike, organizing, or in other struggles,” the federation stated.

The ban on office-holding and the 10 percent fee drew criticism from the “Change To Win” coalition, which includes all four departed unions. Change to Win Chair Anna Burger called the fees “discriminatory.”

Northwest mechanics strike for jobs

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 08:12:00 +0000

Northwest Airlines mechanics, cleaners and custodians walked off the job Aug. 20, refusing to accept layoffs that would leave half of them without jobs, and pay cuts that would reduce the wages of those left by 25 percent. According to a statement on the Airline Mechanics Fraternal Association web site, not one of the 4,400 members has crossed the picket line to return to work.

AMFA’s statement emphasized that the strike is about jobs, not money. “At the signing of our last contract we had 9,750 jobs,” it said. Northwest has eliminated over 5,000 jobs and demanded that the union agree to the elimination of another 2,000, leaving a mere 2,750 jobs in four years. The statement concluded, “The remaining jobs would be eliminated through attrition, resulting in the loss of all jobs and busting our union.”

Northwest has hubs in Detroit, Minneapolis, Memphis, Tokyo and Amsterdam.

According to an AP report, the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees airline maintenance and repair, has nearly doubled the number of inspectors watching Northwest, from 46 to 80. But according to the FAA inspectors’ union, the Professional Airways Systems Specialist Union, only 21 of these are maintenance inspectors assigned to Northwest. They include 10 who were pulled away from watching other airlines.

AMFA is not an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. In the late 1990s, after airline workers’ unions took big concessions to keep afloat airlines threatening bankruptcy, AMFA, a craft union, vigorously campaigned and convinced mechanic members of the International Association of Machinists to drop the IAM and affiliate with AMFA. The bitter feelings from that action have no doubt dampened expressions of solidarity from the remaining unions.

But many labor observers see disturbing parallels between the AMFA strike and the disastrous PATCO strike of 1981. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was also an independent union. Its leadership minimized the need for solidarity, counting on the high skill level of its members to win the strike. While some labor activists mobilized in support of the PATCO strikers, the response was inadequate. Without solidarity of other workers, PATCO members were replaced and defeated and a precedent for union-busting was set that impacted the entire labor movement up to the present day. (See related editorial, page 12.)

rwood @ pww.org