Q & A
Questions and Answers 43 - 44
Question 43: The National Mediation Board determined that 13,380 Delta flight attendants were eligible to vote in the May 28 representation election. How do we know Delta’s roster is accurate if there’s no seniority list on record?
Answer: AFA activists and organizers spent hundreds of hours working through the list of Delta flight attendants during their recent organizing campaign. We checked and re-checked the names on the list, and updated our records as we learned of any changes. It’s hard work when there’s no published seniority list, but the activists went through the list name by name to verify it. In the end, it was highly accurate.
Question 44: ALPA has signed a tentative agreement between Delta Air Lines and pilots at both Delta and Northwest. Where does that leave other unions, like IAM and AFA-CWA, who have still not been included in merger talks with Delta or Northwest management?
Answer: Delta has made no effort to include other unions in talks because it has no intention of having any union but ALPA on its property post-merger.
Delta Air Lines executives will be the controlling management team at a merged carrier. They have spent almost as much time and money convincing the traveling public, elected officials and federal regulators that a merger is in everyone’s best interest as they have stifling the very employees they purport to protect when combining Northwest’s and Delta’s operations.
It’s obvious that Delta management sees not only the financial benefit of coming to a combined contract agreement with ALPA pilots before a merger, but sees the potential public—and investor—relations bump in reaching a deal before Department of Justice approval. What is not obvious to many observers is that Delta is working full-bore behind the scenes to prevent its flight attendants, ground staff and other workgroups from having a seat at the bargaining table and a voice in their future at the “new Delta.”
There are about 12,000 pilots covered by the joint tentative agreement. By refusing to engage over 20,000 flight attendants in plans for the future of the “new global airline,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson is still a world away from his Congressional testimony that a merger will “provide opportunities for our people to benefit from our planned growth and future success.”
Delta’s own press release following the announcement of a tentative ALPA agreement quoted Anderson as saying, “Achieving a joint contract and combined seniority list in advance of the closing of the merger is something that has never been done in this industry and is a testament to the leadership of ALPA and a working together culture.” Delta management must be made to recognize that it is promoting a culture of exclusion in the Delta family at this critical juncture, jeopardizing the potential for a healthy “direct relationship” among all employees in this merger.
Our MEC and AFA-CWA attorneys continue to pressure Northwest and Delta management to acknowledge and enrich the “working together culture” that has existed between flight attendants and Northwest executives for over sixty years – a relationship between union represented employees and management that has advanced our profession, helped set industry standards, provided job protections and benefits for frontline workers and made Northwest Airlines the suitable merger partner it is considered today.
We encourage every Northwest flight attendant to write to Richard Anderson and Joanne Smith at Delta, and Doug Steenland and Julie Showers at Northwest at the addresses below. Ask them why they don’t want to promote dialogue between management and the workforce, nor to include flight attendants – an integral part of the frontline family – in merger discussions:
Richard –
Joanne –
Doug –
Julie –