EAGAN, Minn. (AP) -- Northwest Airlines is threatening to discipline, and possibly fire, union employees if they proceed with picketing that questions the safety and security of Northwest flights, according to a letter the airline sent to the mechanics union.þþ``It seems like pure intimidation,'' said Jim Atkinson, president of Local 33 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The mechanics and the Professional Flight Attendants Association had planned to conduct informational picketing on July 2 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.þþThe union members planned to picket to raise awareness of the company's practice of having overseas and third-party repair stations do maintenance on Northwest aircraft. They say maintenance performed in other countries poses a security risk.þþ``Any suggestion that safety or security has been compromised at Northwest is both false and highly damaging to Northwest's business,'' Northwest labor relations Vice President Julie Hagen Showers said in a June 18 letter to the mechanics union, which was posted on the union Web site Wednesday.þþThe picketing might violate the company's rules that employees not disparage the safety, security or quality of the airline's operations, she said. The picketing also could constitute using ``public economic coercion'' to get Northwest to scale back outsourcing, violating the Railway Labor Act, she said.þþ``AMFA or PFAA-represented employees who engage in such rule violations will be subject to discipline up to and including discharge,'' the letter states.þþNorthwest declined comment on Wednesday.þþNorthwest's contract with its mechanics allows the Eagan, Minn.-based company to spend about 38 percent of its aircraft maintenance costs on outside vendors. Until recently, the company has been under that limit.þþBut with layoffs of mechanics in the last few years, it is bumping against the outsourcing spending cap this year, the union has said. The union represented 9,795 mechanics, cleaners and custodians at Northwest when the current contract was reached in May 2001. The union's work force was cut to 6,400 by last summer.þþNorthwest uses a Singapore company called ST Aviation Services Co. to maintain some of its of DC-10s and 747s. The company has emphasized that the Singapore facility is subject to federal regulations and has been used by the U.S. Navy and other airlines.þþMajor U.S. airlines outsourced anywhere from 33 percent to 79 percent of their maintenance costs to third-party vendors in 2002, according to a 2003 report from the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General.þþ
Source: NY Times
