Court gives unions go-ahead at largest U.S. airline

[Omaha Steve]

http://peoplesworld.org/court-gives-unions-go-ahead-at-largest-u-s-airline/

by: Mark Gruenberg July 14 2010



WASHINGTON (PAI) - A federal court ruling here gave the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA and the Machinists the "go" signal to organize approximately 50,000 workers combined at the "new Delta," the largest U.S. airline - and they promptly took advantage of it.

On July 1, AFA filed a petition for a union recognition election among 21,000 flight attendants at the carrier. The same day, the Machinists did the same thing for two units - one for fleet service workers and the other for passenger service workers - at the airline. Combined, those two units employ 30,000 people, IAM said.

AFA's filing with the National Mediation Board, which governs airline labor-management relations, is its third try at unionizing the Delta attendants, but its first since red-state anti-union Delta devoured blue-state wall-to-wall-union Northwest Airlines, where AFA had represented about 9,000 attendants.

Each of the two unions needs recognition cards from 35 percent of the combined Northwest-Delta group of workers involved to hold an election at the "new Delta." The unions have two weeks to deliver the recognition cards to NMB, which must verify their legitimacy and then set election dates.

"AFA-CWA asked the NMB to declare that the airline is a single transportation system as a result of the Delta-Northwest merger, thus paving the way for an election," the Flight Attendants explained.

FULL story at link.