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NWA Awaits Verdict on Deal: Flight Attendants' Tally Due Today

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Martin J. Moylan, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Jun. 6--Northwest Airlines union flight attendants deliver their verdict on a contract proposal today.

If the contract wins approval, the struggling carrier will have deals with all its major work groups except baggage handlers. And that group wraps up a vote on a revised Northwest offer this week.

But if the flight attendants deal is rejected, the bankrupt carrier says it will seek to impose a contract that will cost flight attendants many more jobs and much more money. And no one knows if the flight attendants would then capitulate -- or fight back with a strike or other action.

"Either way, the outcome will be very important for all of the workers at Northwest Airlines," said John Budd, a professor of human resources at the University of Minnesota. "If the agreement is approved, this brings the carrier one step closer to emerging from bankruptcy and hopefully preserving some jobs. If (it's) rejected, it will be more difficult to successfully emerge from bankruptcy and preserve jobs."

The proposed contract would slash annual flight attendant wages and benefits by $195 million. It's part of an overall effort by Northwest to cut its annual labor costs by $1.4 billion.

With base and premium pay reductions, benefit losses and work rule changes, flight attendants say they could take up to 35 percent cuts in their overall compensation.

If the contract wins approval, flight attendants' annual pay would range from about $15,000 to $38,000.

When the baggage handlers rejected an earlier deal with Northwest, the judge overseeing Northwest's bankruptcy reorganization nudged them back to the bargaining table to cut a revised deal.

But Northwest has been warning flight attendants not to contemplate such a course, saying "those hopes, if they exist, are misplaced."

With a "no" vote, Northwest says it would drop a proposed severance plan, shift flight-attendant operations on 30 percent of international flying to foreign workers and lay off more flight attendants starting next month.

Yet Budd says he believes the ratification vote is too close to call.

"Ultimately I think the deciding factor will be each individual flight attendant's assessment of whether their job is worth doing at the wage and benefit package being offered," he said.

John Remington, a professor of industrial relations at the University of Minnesota, said he expects the pact will win narrow approval.

"I suspect many attendants will vote for it because they don't see a real alternative, other than taking their chances with the bankruptcy judge," he said. Several leaders of the union, the Professional Flight Attendants Association, have urged rejection of the contract, although the PFAA bargained it. And some leaders of a group behind an effort to oust the PFAA at Northwest and replace it with another union, the Association of Flight Attendants, also have spoken out against the contract.

"I'd say it is going down," said Mollie Reiley, a leader of the AFA camp. "It would set us back 30 years. We'd be taking a risk (rejecting it). But I'm willing to take that risk."

Most AFA backers are voting against the contract but "so are some of the PFAA leaders," Reiley said.

Karen Schultz, PFAA spokesperson, is among them. "The company pushed too far," she says. "It's overreaching."

Martin J. Moylan can be reached at mmoylan@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5479.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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