Northwest Airlines Corp.'s ability to keep flying while its mechanics are on strike is a telling example of how the airline industry's severe financial troubles are sapping the clout of unions, analysts said.
Just ask 30-year mechanic Sander Shipper, who was walking the picket line Thursday at Los Angeles International Airport as Northwest flights came and went.
"No doubt" the unions have seen their power ebb at distressed airlines such as Northwest, said Shipper, who turned 57 when the walkout began a week ago today. "It's been very unsettling for the employees."
In the past, a strike by a major employee group meant the targeted carrier had little chance of staying airborne, especially if the airline's other unions refused to cross the picket lines. But when Northwest brought in replacement workers for Shipper and 4,400 other members of the striking Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn., other unionized employees -- pilots, flight attendants and other ground workers -- reported for work. That has allowed Northwest to operate more than 95% of its flights.
The lack of labor solidarity partly reflected the go-it-alone stance of Shipper's union, which has alienated much of organized labor by plucking members from other unions. But it also showed that airline unions were thinking twice about using their most potent bargaining tactic against a company that is already on the brink of bankruptcy.
A strike now, analysts say, might ultimately mean no airline and no job.
"In that sense, the unions are losing quite a bit of their power," said Richard Gritta, a business professor at the University of Portland.
Employees already have seen UAL Corp.'s United Airlines and US Airways Group Inc. file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and they know that Northwest and Delta Air Lines Inc. are dangerously close to doing so.
The industry has lost more than $30 billion since 2000 and is expected to lose $5 billion more this year, in large part because of record-high fuel prices. So the airlines have repeatedly gone to their employees for concessions to stay alive.
This year, three of United's major labor groups -- the mechanics union, the Assn. of Flight Attendants and the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers -- threatened to strike at various times in protest of United's demand for more wage and benefit cuts.
But the airline warned that if the unions didn't come to terms, it would ask the bankruptcy judge for permission to impose the cuts. The workers stayed on the job.
