Flight attendants balk
TEXT OF STORY
SCOTT JAGOW: More employee troubles at bankrupt Northwest Airlines. Flight attendants have turned down a pay cut deal and that could put a recent agreement with pilots in jeopardy too. Janet Babin reports.
JANET BABIN: The proposed contract called for flight attendants to take a 21 percent hourly pay cut. The union says that’s on top of other concessions worth more than a third of their pay. The vast majority of the flight attendants rejected the deal.
Northwest recently got concessions from its pilots, but that contract is contingent on other workers hammering out deals as well.
Brad Bartholomew is with The Newfinland Group.
BRAD BARTHOLOMEW: It is saying that if we’re gonna participate in the concessions, everybody is. However, the pilots will probably, more than likely, just sit there with the deal they’ve struck and let management and the flight attendant union slug it out.
The union says it wants to talk, but Northwest asked a Bankruptcy Court to allow it to impose new contract terms on the flight attendants.
Northwest says it needs $1.4 billion in concessions from all its workers to become financially viable.
I’m Janet Babin for Marketplace.
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