Peter Rachleff Calls for Support for Northwest Workers on Strike

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Peter Rachleff drew up a statement of solidarity with Northwest
workers on strike.  It's at <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/
amfa2005.html>, and it's also copied below.  Please sign onto the
statement below and circulate it to others to sign.  Reply to Peter
at <rachleff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>.

A STATEMENT OF PROTEST AND SOLIDARITY

As union leaders and activists, we want to make it clear that we
stand against the behavior of Northwest Airlines management and with
the workers of Northwest Airlines and their unions as they seek
economic justice.

For too many years, the management of Northwest Airlines -- and other
U.S. corporations -- has demanded that workers give more hours, more
effort, and more of their lives to their jobs while receiving reduced
compensation, less security, and less respect. At the same time,
management has taken home fat compensation packages, stock options,
bonuses, and golden parachutes. NWA management is now in the midst of
spending, by their own admission, more than $100 million to bust the
mechanics' union. They are recuiting hastily trained scabs and
employing the infamous union-busting Vance Security company to
intimidate the hard-working men and women who have given decades of
their lives to Northwest.

NWA management has demanded that mechanics allow the contracting-out
of the 53% of their work that remains since management already
contracted out 38% of it. Fewer than one-fourth of the mechanics
employed in 2000 will continue to have jobs. For those who remain,
management demands a 26% wage cut and the emptying of their
underfunded defined-benefit pensions into 401K plans tied to the
stock market. NWA management has demanded that flight attendants
undergo a 40% cut in their overall compensation. They are seeking
similar cuts from other workers and, if they are able to force the
mechanics and the flight attendants to accept these cuts, these other
workers -- pilots, baggage handlers, ticket agents, clerical workers,
and others -- will have little base from which to resist. The flying
public will also have many reasons to question the safety of NWA
flights.

NWA management's behavior is all too familiar. It mirrors the actions
of Hormel, the Detroit newspapers, Caterpillar, Staley, Delphi Auto
Parts, Enron, and United Airlines. It also sets the stage for other
corporate employers to demand that their workers and unions allow
expanded outsourcing of work, accept slashed wages and benefits, and
give up the pensions that they have sacrificed for over many years.

This must stop. These actions by NWA management, combined with their
abuse of the trust of Minnesota citizens, tax-payers, and state
government, make them a suitable poster child for the labor
movement's renewed efforts to educate, organize, and mobilize all
Americans -- native-born and immigrant, blue collar and white collar,
manufacturing and service, women and men, union members and non-union
members. All of us need to say "NO!" to this kind of behavior. NO to
union-busting! NO to corporate greed! NO to a race to the bottom of
the economic ladder!

We union leaders and activists stand against Northwest Airlines'
behavior and we stand with Northwest's workers and their unions in
their struggle for economic justice.

Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://montages.blogspot.com>
<http://monthlyreview.org>
<http://mrzine.org>
* Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud-
ahmadinejads-face.html>;  <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez-
congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/
2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>