MINNEAPOLIS - The fight between Northwest Airlines and its flight attendants is about to turn into a fight between their lawyers.þþFlight attendants announced on Tuesday that they would conduct random, unannounced strikes beginning at 10:01 p.m. on Aug. 15 unless Northwest backs off the new contract it imposed Monday after workers voted down a negotiated agreement.þþBut would a strike be legal?þþThe union says its workers cannot be forced to work under terms they did not agree to. Northwest says that it had a bankruptcy judge’s permission to impose those terms, and that any strike is barred by the Railway Labor Act, which governs airline labor.þþNorthwest has said it will seek a court order to stop a strike or any other job actions. Northwest, which is based in Eagan, Minn., filed such a motion earlier this year when the flight attendants’ previous union threatened a strike, but the judge never acted on it.þþThe union’s general counsel, David A. Borer, said, “As far as we’re concerned it’s clear in the law that we have the right to strike, and we intend to exercise that right.” þþHe acknowledged that the legality of an airline strike in these circumstances had not been tested. But he said Congress could have barred strikes in bankruptcy — and did not.þþThat misses the point, said Anthony M. Sabino, an associate professor of law at St. John’s University in New York and a specialist on airline bankruptcies. For a strike to be effective, it has to hurt the airline. And Northwest is already hurting.þþ“There’s a 50-50 chance any strike might be legal, it might be illegal,” he said. “But who cares? Because if they walk, what matters is they stop flying and they may never start flying again.”þþNorthwest twice negotiated tentative agreements with its roughly 9,000 flight attendants, only to watch the rank and file vote them down. Flight attendants objected to the 21 percent cuts and major work rule changes, and questioned whether the airline needed the $195 million in yearly savings it was demanding.þþIn June, 80 percent of flight attendants voted down the first agreement, and then voted out their union.þþThe incoming Association of Flight Attendants quickly negotiated a tweaked version of the rejected contract, although the pay cuts were the same and Northwest still would have saved $195 million a year. Fifty-five percent of flight attendants rejected that deal on Monday.þþNorthwest then imposed the harsher contract that flight attendants rejected in June. þþA Northwest spokesman, Bill Mellon, said Northwest remained available to talk to the flight attendants, although any proposal they discuss would still have to meet the $195 million savings goal.þþ
Source: NY Times
