Airline flight attendants will be voting over the next 28 days on whether to oust the Teamsters as their union and switch to the upstart Professional Flight Attendants Association.þþElection instructions have been mailed and flight attendants should receive them in two to five days. Guy Meek, interim president of the association, said he wasn't sure whether any attendants had received them by Thursday. The outcome won't be known until June 19.þþThe Teamsters have represented Northwest flight attendants since 1976, and this is the fourth time that rivals have attempted to oust that union.þþDissident Northwest flight attendants began their drive to pull out of the Teamsters last June, 10 months before Northwest management proposed cutting total flight attendant compensation by $134 million a year.þþAssociation organizers say the 1.4 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters has too much control over Teamsters Local 2000, which represents about 11,000 Northwest attendants. Two weeks after the association announced its campaign last summer, Teamsters President James P. Hoffa removed the elected officers of Local 2000, saying they failed to aggressively fight the association.þ
Source: Chicago Tribune
