Northwest Air, Pilots In Impasse
Pilots for Northwest Airlines have given the airline 30 days to settle their contract or they could go on strike after federal mediators declared an impasse in contract negotiations.
Now that contract talks with the nation's fourth-largest airline are officially in a deadlock, Northwest pilots are ready to gear up a strike operation, reports CBS Correspondent Alan Cox of WCCO in Minneapolis.
"There's not one Northwest pilot out there who wants a strike, but there's not one Northwest pilot who is not willing to strike," said Paul Omodt, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association.
Strike talk among pilots took on a new sense of urgency after the National Mediation Board declared contract talks at an impasse Wednesday. That triggered a 30-day cooling-off period, meaning the earliest the pilots could strike would be Aug. 29.
The airline said customers with reservations in the next 30 days will not be affected. But, asked whether passengers should avoid booking flights on Northwest Airlines for the Labor Day weekend, pilot Hal Myers said: "I don't think there are any guarantees in this situation."
At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where about 500 daily Northwest flights account for 80 percent of the traffic, spokesman Mike Conway said backup plans were being developed.
"Our contingency plan would be to provide passengers with information on other means of transportation to their destination," Conway told The Oakland Press of Pontiac, Mich.
The union representing 6,000 Northwest pilots has turned down the board's offer of binding arbitration. No date was scheduled for further talks.
Northwest and its pilots are at odds over pay and work rules. The pilots want a 15 percent pay increase while the company has offered 10 percent. The pilots are also seeking retroactive pay averaging about $25,000 per pilot, while the company has offered 2 percent of gross earnings between October 1997 to the date the contract is signed.
Both the union and the airline expressed hope that an agreement could still be reached by the end of next month. Northwest officials said they were disappointed that the pilots rejected arbitration.
"At the same time, we believe that a negotiated settlement remains possible, and we will do our utmost to achieve such a settlement," said Ben Hirst, senior vice president and lead negotiator for the airline.
The talks, which began in August 1996, have been under the direction of a federal mediator for nearly a year. Pilots asked the board in mid-June to declare an impasse.
The board decided that further mediation wouldn't be successful without an impasse declaration, said board spokesman Jim Armshaw.
If the cooling-off period expires without a settlement, Northwest officials say they likely will ask President Clinton to declare an emergency and force pilots to keep working on the grounds that a strik would devastate the rural regions Northwest serves. Siding with the pilots, Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar is trying to organize congressional opposition to Clinton's possible intervention in the dispute.
Oberstar, the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, has asked fellow members of the Minnesota delegation to sign a letter asking the president not to block a strike.
"I don't think it's appropriate for the president of the United States or the Congress of the United States to intercede when the two parties should resolve these matters themselves," Oberstar told Minneapolis radio station WCCO Thursday.
Northwest lobbyists, meanwhile, are urging members of Congress in states where Northwest is a major carrier to stay out of the issue.
"They're very interested. They want to hear from us as much as we want to speak to them. If there was a Northwest strike it would literally be an economic disaster in certain parts of the country," said Elliott Seiden, the airline's chief lobbyist.
The pilots asked Gov. Arne Carlson to meet with them and discuss the labor situation, but Carlson said he would not get involved.
"We have been asked by the National Mediation Board to stay neutral and that's precisely what we're doing," Carlson said. "Our interests are the interests of the public."
But he warned that a strike would have severe economic effects on Minnesota and surrounding states such as North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan.