Hung Out to Dry: Northwest and Duluth

Everyone except three guys up on the polar icecap has heard about the deconstruction/implosion of Northwest Airlines in the months leading up to the inevitable bankruptcy which had the makings of a Cecil B. DeMille epic-cast of thousands and all that.

Well. Northwest hosed the mechanics's union and busted them with scabs. They stiffed their creditors and the taxpayers were left holding the bag for the pension liability courtesy of the bankruptcy courts.

But there's more. Seems that as part of a bailout of Northwest back in the early nineties, the state of Minnesota and the city of Duluth sprung for a state of the art heavy maintenance base. The payoff for Northwest was a fully funded maintenance base for their Airbus aircraft. The carrot for Duluth was a passel of good paying aerospace jobs for the future.

At this point Northwest recently informed the city that it would not be bringing any maintenance work to the facility, because they had all these lovely scabs, don't you know, who will work anywhere for starvation wages, can't you see. Northwest is delinquent on its property tax payments and its lease payments, and it's more likely than not that the lease will be rejected in the pending bankruptcy case.

I've never been to Duluth. But I know that good paying jobs are few and far between in the north country, and it's scandalous how the good folks of Minnesota and Duluth got screwed by the gang of thugs that's running the show at Northwest.

A plague on them. All of them.