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"Airline Workers United" Forms to Fight Concessions Industry-Wide
Things seem to keep going from bad to worse for workers at Northwest Airlines (NWA). While striking mechanics and cleaners face a bitter winter after more than four months on the picket line, pilots, flight attendants, gate/ramp agents, baggage handlers, customer service reps, and other union workers face a fresh round of givebacks against the backdrop of a bankruptcy court.
A New York City bankruptcy court ordered NWA's non-striking unions to accept interim concessions on November 16. Machinist union (IAM) members took 19 percent pay cuts (sending wages back to 1980s levels), hefty health care cuts (doubling deductibles up to $400 for some), layoffs, and wide-scale outsourcing.
"It's like working at a morgue," says Mike Ramsdell, an IAM member in Cincinnati. "The official proposal was to outsource 98 stations to subcontractors. Our station isn't even on the list-which makes me think that our station will be cut entirely. All the small places are pretty much toast."
NWA pilots are looking at even steeper pay cuts (23.9 percent), as are flight attendants with 20.7 percent.
But in a break from routine in this ailing industry, two small but growing campaigns-led by airline workers-are using NWA's strike and bankruptcy debacle as a springboard for what may be the opening moves of an industry-wide fightback.
More
http://counterpunch.org/kutalik01132006.html
"It's like working at a morgue," says Mike Ramsdell, an IAM member in Cincinnati. "The official proposal was to outsource 98 stations to subcontractors. Our station isn't even on the list-which makes me think that our station will be cut entirely. All the small places are pretty much toast."
NWA pilots are looking at even steeper pay cuts (23.9 percent), as are flight attendants with 20.7 percent.
But in a break from routine in this ailing industry, two small but growing campaigns-led by airline workers-are using NWA's strike and bankruptcy debacle as a springboard for what may be the opening moves of an industry-wide fightback.
More
http://counterpunch.org/kutalik01132006.html
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