Former TWA Attendants Press On

Falling Off the List

Recently, TWA flight attendants have suffered more misfortune.

After the merger, they were placed at the bottom of the seniority list by the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents American's flight attendants. As a result, they were first to go when the layoffs began. And now, because the contract limits recall rights to five years (which is standard in the airline industry), they are gradually losing their recall rights.

The first group of 167 TWA flight attendants, laid off in October 2001, fell off the recall list last October. The last group, laid off in July 2003, would fall off in July 2008.

When the merger agreement was reached in 2001, "we were promised our jobs, and seniority was left up to the unions to negotiate," says Roger Graham, an 18-year TWA flight attendant who oversaw the survey and is spearheading efforts to seek redress for the group. "We were promised that a facilitator would be involved in the seniority integration. But that never happened."

"Most of these people had 20 to 40 years of service, and now they are going to lose their jobs to people who had only one or two years of service when the layoffs began," says the 43-year-old Graham, who is now employed at a brokerage firm but who devotes 20 to 25 hours a week to working on behalf of his former co-workers.