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August 20, 2005
:: Strike - and now the real fight begins
Well, it was a long day yesterday. Spent most of the day waiting for any glimmer of progress between AMFA and NWA to occur, and of course it didn't come. Then at 10:57PM (4 minutes before the "deadline") AMFA emerged from the NMB meeting facilities in D.C. and began to distribute press releases before Jeff Matthew's (AMFA lead negotiator) made his "we had no other option" speech to reporters, calling the strike.
10:57PM (11:57PM EDT) - the slightly early announcement indicates that talks had broken down well before then. Sources say that the two sides never met "face-to-face" but rather through mediators Hoglander and Gibbons. This is by no means uncommon; but then again, if either side was serious about getting a deal I would have expected face-to-face bargaining.
Now the real fight begins: Will NWA remain operatationally stable with their contigtency plan of 1200 replacement workers, outsourcing, and a reduced fall schedule to ease the transition, or will the AMFA strike cause irreperabale damage to the airline forcing NWA to return to the table. Only time will tell...but I think this strike is not short-term by any means. As I put in the previous post, NWA would be more apt to lock out AMFA for good than return to the table to hagle over job retention.
One more point here that must be made. NONE of the other NWA unions declared sympathy strikes. The most likely group - the flight attendants - voted against a sympathy strike in ballots tallied last week. The IAM shot a very clear "tough sh!t" letter back to AMFA when O.V. Delle-Femine asked the machinists union to lock-step with the mechanics. The stewards and directors of the IAM were quick to remind AMFA that the wounds were still seeping from the raid AMFA conducted to pull NWA mechanics from the IAM in the late 1990's.
Finally, the pilots - who are literally the ONLY laborers who can "ground" an airline - are slamming both management and AMFA. Knowing that they are next in line for another round of concession talks, the stance of ALPA was "get 'er done!" - a message directed at both parties. The 15% pay cut "bridge agreement" ALPA signed with NWA in October 2004 was supposed to pave the way for the other labor groups and management down a clear path to fiscal restructuring without getting dragged through a Chapter 11.
AMFA is only round 1. ALPA, PFAA, and the IAM, plus a likely Chapter 11 filing will be the subsequent rounds. This is only the beginning - to bad it started with a strike, which usually comes at the end.
Posted by pierre at August 20, 2005 8:39 AM