When President Bush at least temporarily stopped AMFA from striking last week, unionists were united in denouncing the president for attacking labor rights throughout the airline industry. Yet organized labor hasn't been quick to rally around AMFA and lend much-needed support in what's shaping up as a landmark battle -- and don't expect labor to do so anytime soon.

That's because while union leaders say they sympathize with the mechanics' plight, some don't have much sympathy for their union.

In 1998, AMFA broke a cardinal rule of the AFL-CIO -- organized labor's umbrella group -- by recruiting Northwest workers away from an existing AFL-CIO union, the International Association of Machinists (IAM). AMFA says the IAM, which also represents Northwest baggage handlers and gate agents, did a lousy job representing mechanics; the AFL-CIO saw AMFA's campaign at Northwest as a "raid" fueled by promises of big contract gains.

To complicate matters, AMFA leader O.V. Delle-Femine has publicly set his union on a higher plane of sorts, criticizing the trappings of other unions and using words like "bosses" -- a term usually used by organized labor's foes -- to describe others in the union movement.

"They have been very judgmental about organized labor," said Bernard Brommer, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, an umbrella group for unions that together have over 400,000 members. "We have been advised by the national AFL-CIO that this isn't our fight."

Ed Wytkin, executive director of the national AFL-CIO's transportation trades department, said that AMFA has "chosen a path of isolation and independence. Frankly, we have no relationship with them," said Wytkin, whose department represents 33 unions, including all of the major unions in the airline industry except AMFA.

Labor solidarity is as old as the union movement itself, and has become more important in the past two decades as organized labor's fortunes have declined. Solidarity plays on the idea of strength in numbers. It prompts unions to band together for everything from packing labor rallies and picket lines with fervent supporters, to exerting political pressure.

The latter is something AMFA will dearly need if its dispute with Northwest gets settled in Congress, said Peter Rachleff, a labor activist and Macalester College professor who specializes in labor history.

Congress will inherit the conflict, unless it's resolved during the next 60 days by a Presidential Emergency Board. (Meanwhile, the union can't legally strike). AMFA, which counts Northwest's 9,400 mechanics as its biggest bargaining unit, has little if any clout in Congress. The AFL-CIO -- though it appears to be an antagonist of the ruling Republican Party -- at least has some political power.

"If you want an impact with your legislator, you need the entire AFL-CIO," Rachleff said.

All labor should be concerned with AMFA's fate, Rachleff said. The union's battle with Northwest marks the first major labor conflict handled by the Bush administration. "When (mechanics) were at the White House," Rachleff said referring to an AMFA protest Monday, "(AFL-CIO president) John Sweeney should have been there."

Rachleff acknowledged, however, that if AMFA wants AFL-CIO support, it will have to ask, and "ask nicely."

Paul Volker, a Northwest mechanic and member of AMFA Local 33's communications committee, said it's not clear whether the union would ask for the AFL-CIO's support. "That's a good question," he said. "Right now, that's an unknown. We haven't discussed it."

Volker said that in his opinion, the AFL-CIO's structure promotes "complacency." When union members are discouraged from switching organizations, their unions in turn become complacent, he said.

The AFL-CIO's longstanding anti-raiding policy is intended to -- among other things -- keep unions from wasting resources by fighting over the same workers, an AFL-CIO spokesman said.

At least one of Northwest's other three major unions says it supports AMFA. "Any support we could legally lend them we would," said Bob Krabbe, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 2000, which represents Northwest's flight attendants.

Krabbe noted that mechanics -- when they were members of the IAM -- supported the flight attendants' long fight against Northwest, participating in Local 2000's informational picketing. "Those are the same guys (now in AMFA) who were out there beside us in the rain and wind and snow," he said.