NWA Flight Attendants Seek the Right to Strike

Northwest Airlines Inc. and its flight attendants are to be in court Wednesday to battle over whether workers have the right to strike the carrier later this month.

Beneath dry legal arguments about which federal laws apply in this case, both sides are fighting for survival.

Northwest has sued the flight attendants to fight a potential strike, which could include a smattering of short walk outs targeted at certain flights or a full-scale strike, saying any disruption could cripple the carrier and at worst send it out of business.

On July 31, Northwest imposed terms on flight attendants, including making permanent a temporary pay cut of 21 percent taken in November, as well as reductions in medical benefits and shifts in work rules after they rejected a tentative agreement. The flight attendants responded with a threat to strike as early as Aug. 15.

Flight attendants say they're fighting for their personal survival and say there's no way they can cope with cuts of as much as 40 percent to their wages and benefits without losing homes, taking second jobs to make ends meet or leaving the industry.

In court their union will be fighting for the last piece of leverage it has to try to move the company from its demands.

Northwest and the Association of Flight Attendants are due in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York on Wednesday to make their arguments before Judge Allan L. Gropper, who has been presiding over Northwest's Chapter 11 case.

Northwest employs 7,300 active flight attendants. The airline followed United Airlines and US Airways into Chapter 11 and filed minutes after Delta Air Lines, to use the court's broad powers to unload debt, planes and cut costs.

The suit over whether flight attendants can strike not only stands to decide the immediate future of Northwest and its workers. It also could set a precedent for the airline industry.

In four years filled with airline bankruptcies, no carrier has reached the point of Northwest, asking a bankruptcy judge to block a strike after it has imposed lower wages and benefits on a labor group.

"Because we've never been here before, there's no telling what a judge is going to do," said Rick Bales, interim dean of the Chase College of Law and a labor law expert at the University of Northern Kentucky, near Cincinnati.

This is a case, Bales said, where bankruptcy laws and federal labor laws collide.

Northwest contends that the flight attendants can't strike under a federal law that lays out the steps before an airline union can legally strike - steps that haven't been met yet.

The union says that same law keeps the company from imposing lower wages and benefits on workers, which Northwest did after winning the right to do so in bankruptcy court and after flight attendants rejected a contract proposal last week.

Because flight attendants are working under imposed rules, the union said it has the right to strike.

A ruling that allows a strike raises questions for Northwest's financial future.

The short, surprise strikes of selected flights and cities that the union has threatened wouldn't send the company out of business right away, said Julius Maldutis, president of the New York-based consulting firm Aviation Dynamics.

"It would be a gradual erosion of their financial condition," he said.

Such strikes, Maldutis said, would send passengers booking with other airlines.

A ruling for the airline would take away the last of the union's leverage, airline and labor experts said.

The union lost much of that when the Gropper gave Northwest the right to impose new terms on flight attendants after delaying a decision to let the two sides negotiate.

It's possible the judge might try to diffuse the situation by telling both sides to return to the bargaining table and reach a solution before the Aug. 15 strike deadline, Bales said.

But a bankruptcy judge also has to keep in mind the interests of all other stakeholders who are owed money in Northwest's bankruptcy case including lenders and suppliers, said Doug Marshall, associate professor at the School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota.

This case, Marshall said, "will set a precedent no matter how it comes out. This is the issue, the big issue that everybody's watching."

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