Former union leader crosses Northwest mechanics' picket lines

Despite his long history as a union leader, Northwest Airlines maintenance inspector Mike Hurley is crossing the picket lines of striking mechanics.

Hurley served six years as president of the Machinists union local that represented Northwest mechanics and ground workers until the mechanics voted in 1998 to break away and join the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, an independent union not affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

While many of Hurley's former co-workers now brand him a scab, he does not regret his decision, saying AMFA should have given him and other members the opportunity to vote on what the company called its final offer in August.

"I had to follow the courage of my convictions and not a culture of contradictions, namely the AMFA," Hurley said.

Before AMFA's 4,100 mechanics, cleaners and custodians went on strike Aug. 20, Hurley was earning about $37 an hour and close to $77,000 a year. Now he makes $27.54 an hour, a rate Northwest imposed after the strike began. That works out to $57,283 a year based on a 40-hour work week.

Hurley's name and photo are now posted on the official AMFA Local 33 Web site under the heading "confirmed scabs." On Monday, AMFA members picketed his house.

"Mike Hurley has betrayed his union brothers and sisters," said Steve MacFarlane, AMFA's assistant national director. "Mike now has to live with the fact that his co-workers will forever view him as a scab."

Hurley and his wife weren't home at the time, but Hurley said his 14-year-old son and 6-year-old granddaughter were.

"They did a good job of scaring my granddaughter," he said.

Hurley views that action as "a ploy to intimidate others to not go back to work."

Northwest started hiring permanent replacements Sept. 13, but it has declined to say how many, or how many AMFA members have crossed the picket line to return to work.

MacFarlane said only about 20 AMFA members had returned by Wednesday.

"That is a remarkable number on Day 33 of any strike," he said.

AMFA's leadership is betting that Northwest can't hire enough permanent replacements from the temporary workers or persuade enough AMFA members to cross over.

"If we hold the line, Northwest will have to come back to the table and provide a contract that is acceptable to our members," MacFarlane said in a recorded message to members Wednesday.

Hurley takes a different view of the replacement workers.

"The people that are working here have a great deal of airline experience, having been laid off from other major airlines," he said. And he said they're determined to prove AMFA mechanics wrong about their ability to perform maintenance that allows the airline to operate safely and efficiently.

"They are hardworking guys who want to make a living," he said.

Hurley was an IAM negotiator in 1993, when Northwest unions accepted cutbacks to allow the airline to avoid bankruptcy. He called AMFA a "raider organization" and is critical of AMFA's strategy in its dispute with Northwest.

"They make this out to be a grand labor struggle, when it is merely a company trying to survive," he said.

He's especially critical of AMFA's leadership for not asking members to vote on proposal in mid-August to preserve 2,750 mechanics jobs and provide as much as 26 weeks' severance pay and medical benefits for cleaners, custodians and mechanics who would have been laid off. He thinks the rank and file would have accepted that deal.

When negotiations last broke down Sept. 11, Northwest had reduced its offer to saving only 1,080 jobs and only 16 weeks of severance.

"I did not believe that the AMFA did right by its members in terms of legitimately negotiating," Hurley said. "We never got the option to vote."

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