And now it's three

Facing wage and work-rule concessions demanded by the bosses at bankrupt Northwest Airlines, the airline's flight attendants face another dilemma. The nation's major union for the trade, the Association of Flight Attendants, has been trying to bump the local and in-house Professional Flight Attendants Association as the union for the 10,000 cabin crew, but now, almost three weeks into the AFA organising drive, comes yet another union that wants to enlist the Northwest workers (and collect dues from them). The Transport Workers Union says it can do a better job than either AFA or the local union. TWU already represents flight attendants at Southwest as well as some mechanics at American; AFA is the big one, with over 46,000 members at United, US Airways, and 20 other airlines. The plucky PFAA, as the home-grown union likes to call itself, ousted the giant Teamsters union as the flight attendant union at Northwest in June 2003. No word if the Teamsters will try to take back the flight attendants.

Technorati tag: unions Airlines