PATCO or P-9? Does It Matter?

    At the risk of really sitting this place ablaze, throughout the day yesterday I had a number of conversations with people who argued that the Northwest strike is more like the P-9-Hormel strike of the 1980s then PATCO, which I had argued. Hmmmm...I think it might be a little of both--but the bottom line question still is: what to do about the workers on strike?

    For those who are blissfully unaware of the P-9 situation, it was one of the most bitter internal debates in the labor movement in the past couple of decades (by comparison, the current argument over the split seems like a mild disagreement). This is a grossly distilled summation (for the sake of the majority of readers): Local P-9 of the UFCW in Austin, Minnesota struck Hormel (now there's the original meaning of Spam, in case you've never had the pleasure of that dining experience) and kept the strike going long after the international union had tried to end it--and, ultimately, the international put the local into trusteeship, splitting the labor movement (or at least, dividing the intellectuals and hard-core activist left of labor) over who had the right strategy, the local or the national union. The strike was lost.

    Among the questions raised: when does a union accept cuts in wages and benefits in order to help a company survive? Who decides when to strike a company, the workers or union leadership? What's the "right" balance between rank-and-file militancy versus authority exercised by national leaders? Please, I'm not posing every question...and I'm not seeking to replay the P-9 story.

    So, are we here today with a similar situation: was this strike a smart move? And, if it was not, what is labor's response to it?

    One person, who I believe has the best interests of unions at heart, says about the Northwest workers, "They are getting their just desserts. These are a bunch of idiots. Everyone else in the industry bellied up to the bar to help these companies survive."

     Another individual with a lot of knowledge about Northwest and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) says, "AMFA walked right into the hands of Northwest which did not want to force a strike. These guys just boxed themselves in. And they've done a disservice to the labor movement."

    As I said yesterday, and even the "let's support the workers" advocates did not refute this, the union "leadership" is not like anything we know. The guy running this, national director, 0. V. Delle-Femine, is a labor entrepeneur, someone who can cut out a sweet spot for himself without really having to think about the broader labor movement. He makes his living by raiding other unions, particularly the International Association of Machinists (IAM) but also the Teamsters and Transport Workers. He's in league with a New Hampshire management consultant and a both-sides-of-the-fence law firm who started backing him over the last five years. It's not personal, it's business. 

    Either way, I'm sorry to say, I don't see how these guys survive on the picket line if the pilots, flight attendants and other workers go to work. And as a few commenters yesterday pointed out, the fact that this is happening points to a complete lack of strategy on the part of AMFA--though, realistically, it would have been hard to get much labor support given AMFA's prior raiding of other unions. I think the other unions will generally sit on their hands.

   But, I wonder whether there is a way to seperate Delle-Femine's leading the workers down the path to hell versus the question of my god these workers are screwed. Sure, they bought into Delle-Femine's ugly appeals to self-interest. But, the public is not going to see anything but: there goes labor getting its ass kicked yet again. It's one thing to give concessions--quite another to lose your job.

    And this is where the PATCO piece plays: whatever the specifics of the internal labor dynamic, does the potential failure of the strike have bad precedents by encouraging companies to take the Northwest approach, which called, 18 months ago, for assembling a full-blown skilled workforce to come in during a strike. As one person pointed out to me, U.S. Nursing Corporation already offers ready-to-deploy full strike-breaking workforces in the health care field.

    I'm not arguing that Northwest created the template. Only that sometimes an event does create...and I hate to use this cliche...a tipping point. There have been plenty of anti-war protests but there comes Cindy Sheehan and, boom, something moved. The same dynamic worries me with the Northwest strike (particularly because it touches the public/consumer so directly) and how other companies might perceive future options.

    Something to worry about. But, also something not to jump to conclusions that this is the rank-and-file strike that everyone should drop everything to work on. I think it will behoove everyone to see this as a very complicated situation, with no shining knights, and, maybe requiring some cooler heads to figure out the best way out of this.