Northwest Airlines Mechanics Halt Talks

Striking mechanics at Northwest Airlines Corp. walked away from contract talks Sunday, refusing to say whether they would return to the bargaining table before Tuesday, when Northwest said it would start hiring permanent replacements.

Union officials said they had agreed to wage cuts and layoffs sought by management, but couldn’t reach an agreement with the airline on severance packages and work rules.

Steve MacFarlane, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn.’s assistant national director, said many of the union’s members viewed the strike as a fight of principle and wouldn’t bow to Northwest’s threat to replace them.

“The thought of being replaced by a bunch of scabs is not a scary thing,” he said.

Northwest spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch said the National Mediation Board had informed the airline that the union had “discontinued negotiations.”

“We remain available and willing to return to the table,” Ebenhoch said. He declined to comment further.

The carrier has kept flying during the strike, which began Aug. 20. The negotiations had restarted Thursday after the airline issued its threat to begin hiring permanent replacement workers Tuesday if no deal was reached.

The union says Northwest wants to keep only 1,080 mechanics’ jobs and eliminate the aircraft cleaner and custodian positions represented by the union. That would mean eliminating 3,181 positions that existed before the strike, according to the union. About 200 of the remaining mechanics’ jobs would be in Duluth, with the rest split between Minneapolis and Detroit.

Northwest’s proposal would save it $203 million a year, up from the $176 million it had sought before the strike began Aug. 20. The union made its own proposal Saturday.

“Their first proposal was bad; their second was horrendous,” MacFarlane said of the airline’s offers.

In an update to members Sunday, Jeff Mathews, a spokesman for the union, said its negotiating committee had agreed to Northwest’s targets on layoffs and pay cuts and that the sticking point was severance packages for the workers who would be laid off. The union asked for 20 weeks of severance pay, but the company refused to pay more than 16 weeks, Mathews said. The update also said Northwest was insisting on contract language that would create “intolerable” work conditions, but the union didn’t give specifics.

Marc Drysdale, a Northwest mechanic for 21 years, called Northwest’s offers “totally unacceptable” and said he was happy with the union’s handling of the negotiations.

“What [the airline is] asking for is so unrealistic, I have to get a second job just to make ends meet,” he said.

Northwest is seeking $1.4 billion in annual labor cost savings from all its workers, up from the $1.1 billion it was seeking before the strike, saying rising fuel prices forced it to raise the target. It is in talks with all of its unions.