Northwest Bids to End Flight Crew Pacts

Northwest Airlines (NWACQ Quote) is in a New York bankruptcy court Tuesday seeking to abrogate contracts with its pilots and flight attendants, a move that will likely trigger a round of intense negotiations aimed at reaching agreements before the judge acts on the request.

The court will have 30 days to rule, a period which will present the best opportunity for the fifth-largest airline and its flight crews to make a pact. Without negotiated deals, the court could allow the airline to impose contract terms that the unions view as unreasonably harsh.

The unions say they can strike if that happens; the airline says they can't. Both sides have attorneys who agree with them. Northwest filed for bankruptcy court protection in September, seeking $2.5 billion in annual cost cuts, including $1.4 billion from labor.

Northwest's biggest union, the International Association of Machinists, has already tentatively opted out of the whole ugly mess. Early Saturday morning, the union agreed to present a company proposal to 14,000 members, including airport, equipment service and clerical workers. In that proposal, revised during negotiations, the company agrees to retain many of the 5,000 workers whose jobs it had wanted to outsource.

"Our negotiators were able to convince Northwest to move off some of their initial proposals," said IAM District 143 President Bobby DePace. "Many of our ideas are contained in the company's settlement proposal."

Ironically, while the IAM was able to reach a tentative deal for its members, most of the airline's 4,400 veteran mechanics are now out on the street. An upstart union, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, replaced the IAM as the mechanics' representative in 1999 after a union election, and led the mechanics out on strike in August. Now most of their $36-an-hour jobs are filled by replacement workers earning $26.53 hourly.