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Six unions representing Northwest employees held a rally at the Thunderbird hotel in Bloomington, Minn. Wednesday afternoon. Although not invite AMFA members gathered outside to show their support. Benno Groeneveld [KROON-ne-felt] reports.

The rally was very short, 500 Northwest employees listened to six speakers for total of about 10 minutes.

But the length wasn’t important. What WAS important – organizers said -- was bringing everybody at Northwest together, pilots, flight attendants, and people who load the bags and fuel the planes, everybody.

Bobby De Pace, president of local 143 of the Machinists union explained:

[DePace]: "The purpose of the meeting today is to show Northwest and the community is alive and well on the Northwest property. There are six unions represented today letting the company and the community know we are working together, we are fighting for our jobs, and do whatever it takes to maintain them."

Despite the talk of solidarity, the union of airline mechanics was not invited. That union, AMFA, went out on strike three months ago, but they did it mostly on their own, without the expressed support of the other unions.

However, there were AMFA members outside the meeting, including Ted Ludwig, president of local 33.

[Ludwig]: We feel for them, we've already been through what Northwest wants to do to them. Just to let them know we support them and good luck to them. They also have a bankruptcy court judge that's willing to throw their contract out as well.

Machinists’ union president De Pace says that the groups at the rally will do things differently from the mechanics.

[DePace2]: The thing is we have the other unions support and that's a major, major difference.

Northwest is trying very hard to change the way things work, and trying to do that without consulting its employees, says Hal Meyers, a Northwest pilot and spokesman for the pilots’ union.

[Meyers]: They would like to have more flexibility to enter into agreement with other companies and to have them perform Northwest flying. Also they would like to create a subsidiary company and shift current Northwest flying to that company

But despite all the talk of solidarity, standing together and hoping the airline management will change its ways, very few in the crowd had any illusions. Said one union member “Everybody here is looking for a job.”

The rally was attended by the following unions:
International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAM)
Professional Flight Attendants Association (PFAA)
Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA)
Aircraft Technical Support Association (ATSA)/IFPTE Local 150
Northwest Airlines Meteorology Association (NAMA)
Transport Workers Union (TWU)