Claim Payout The Deciding Factor
By no means was it a resounding victory, but Northwest Airlines
will take what it can get. On Tuesday, the airline's flight
attendants voted to ratify a tentative labor agreement -- the third
negotiated between the airline, and two separate flight attendants
unions -- albeit by the slimmest of margins.
The Associated Press reports the final vote from the 6,442
flight attendants eligible to cast ballots worked out to 50.9
percent in favor of the deal, to 49.1 against. A mere 104 votes
made the difference.
"By no means is this concessionary agreement acceptable to our
members," said NWA AFA-CWA President Jay Hong, "but considering the
difficulties we’ve encountered with the National Mediation
Board, the White House, the courts and the impossible negotiations
posture of Northwest Airlines, the majority of our members have
said today that this agreement represents the best we could do
under the anti-worker conditions we found ourselves negotiating in.
We will continue to rebuild and fight for a better contract in the
future."
As ANN reported, Northwest
announced the tentative agreement April 26. Shortly after that, it
was revealed the top 400 managers at the airline would receive
stock option bonuses, working out to ownership of about five
percent of the carrier.
Unions at the airline were less than pleased... which likely
influenced what already looked to be a squeaker vote.
Under the new contract, top pay for
flight attendants will be capped at roughly $35,400 a year, down
from about $44,000 before Northwest filed for Chapter 11 protection
in September 2005. On the positive side, each flight attendant
stands to earn as much as $15,000 on top of that, as a one-time
payout on a $182 million claim in Northwest's bankruptcy
reorganization. The actual amount depends on what the claim
ultimately sells for.
Had the flight attendants voted down the third TA, the union
would have lost that claim when Northwest emerges from Chapter
11... which could happen as soon as Thursday. Hong said that fact
weighed most heavily on the union's decision to put the contract to
a vote, and the way that vote turned out.
"I made no bones about why we did this, we did this because of
the equity claim. That was not something I think the union could
justifiably make a decision" on, he said. "It's always the flight
attendants that are going to make a decision about money like
that."
In addition to financial solvency, the end to the flight
attendant labor dispute will place Northwest in another unfamiliar
situation: relative peace throughout its unions. The airline, which
has suffered two strikes since 1998, has locked all its employees
into contracts through the end of 2011.