Flight attendants to airlines:
'Pay us or CHAOS!'
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
The Association of Flight Attendants, 46,000 workers strong,
is fighting back against big business airlines in the latest
battle of the class war. Plans are underway for a nationwide
strike by the AFA if any airline uses bankruptcy as an excuse
to attack worker contracts.
AFA president Pat Friend issued a statement on Nov. 16,
before the AFA's board voted to canvass its workers: "Airline
management needs to understand that there will be serious
consequences if they persist in their attacks on our
contracts." The AFA, the world's largest flight attendant
union, is part of the Communications Workers of America,
AFL-CIO. The membership is overwhelmingly female, with a
substantial proportion of people of color.
A second flight attendant group, at Southwest Airlines,
pledged its support for the AFA action. President Thom McDaniel
of Transport Workers Union Local 556 said, "We will not stand
on the sidelines while airline executives misuse bankruptcy
courts to cover up their own mistakes and turn back the clock
on the progress that we have all achieved." (www.afanet.org)
Additionally, the union representing 25,000 flight attendants
at American Airlines has backed the AFA.
Seven airlines with AFA representation are currently in
bankruptcy, including US Airways, United Airlines, ATA and
Hawaiian.
Unlike individuals who file for Chapter 11 because they are
out of work and out of money, big businesses strategically use
the process to grab a bigger share of the profits generated by
their workers.
If they get the blessing of the bankruptcy court, the
airlines plan to force deep pay cuts, cancel union contracts,
and wipe out pension plans and the health benefits of retirees.
United is asking for $149 million in yearly concessions from
the flight attendants, and a total of $725 million from all
employees.
The airlines are in this fix because they have been "driven
into the ground" by corporate mismanagement, said Friend at an
Oct. 7 address at MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Upper-level salaries at the airlines are bloated; for
example, United CEO Glenn Tilton makes $700,000 a year. But
some newly hired flight attendants get poverty-level wages, as
little as $15,000 a year. And these workers, who deal with
heavy meal carts, irate passengers, and medical emergencies in
mid flight at 20,000 feet, can work 14-hour days and only get
paid for 8 hours because of company regulations.
On Nov. 26 strike-authorization ballots went out to AFA
members employed by US Airways, and are being readied for those
at UAL, ATA and Hawaiian. (www.unitedafa.org)
New tactic in class war
Create Havoc Around Our System (CHAOS) is an AFA tactic for
an innovative strike that can take many forms. Perhaps only
flight attendants on 747s will strike--or perhaps there will be
a mass walkout for a day. The AFA gives no notice of when and
where the actions will take place.
Because much U.S. air travel is based on a "hub-and-spoke"
system of connecting flights, actions that delay or halt a
handful of flights could conceivably disrupt the entire system,
through a cascading domino effect. CHAOS dramatically increases
each flight attendant's power to affect the airline.
The AFA developed CHAOS after the TWA union was broken in
1986, when CEO Carl Icahn replaced striking flight attendants
with scabs. With the roaming actions of CHAOS, management
cannot predict where and when to send replacements.
Alaska Airlines attendants first successfully used CHAOS in
1993, when AFA flight attendants walked off individual flights
at random. After a federal judge ruled that the tactic was
legally equivalent to a strike, the union won a favorable
contract.
Next: workers' control?
CHAOS is legally possible because the airlines are
petitioning the bankruptcy courts to throw out the workers'
contracts and pensions. Airline contracts fall under the
National Railway Labor Act, which forbids transportation
strikes until after a 30-day "cooling-off" period.
But there's a loophole in the law. Because the airline has
already announced its intention to void the contracts through
the bankruptcy courts, the AFA can resort to "self-help"--a
strike--without violating the NRLA.
And CHAOS has possibilities beyond strengthening the workers
to get a better deal out of the courts. CHAOS could be used to
fight for the value of the labor that workers have poured into
the airlines' coffers over the years.
Under bankruptcy, the courts appoint a trustee to take over
running the business. Typically, the trustee represents the
banks that financed the company and want to protect their
equity. In United's previous bankruptcy, those financiers
included J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank and Bank One.
But an argument can be made that the flight attendants have
equity greater than any bank in their airline. It's the value
of the thousands of hours of labor they put in before they ever
see a paycheck, their unpaid vacation days, their unclaimed
health benefits. And the airline owes over $4 billion to the
underfunded employee pension plan.
What if the flight attendants used CHAOS to demand that the
bankruptcy courts appoint the workers as trustees of these
bankrupt airlines? With workers' control, even for a brief
time, we'd have the beginning of some really friendly skies,
where people come before profits.
Reprinted from the Dec. 9, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS ::
SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page