UNITED BENETTON of COLORS

16 April, 2007 Judge rejects NWA attendants' move to rescind pay cuts

April 13, 2007

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — A federal bankruptcy judge denied requests by Northwest Airlines flight attendants to reverse company-imposed pay cuts and award compensation for their lost wages.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper ruled today that there is no legal basis for the argument by the Association of Flight Attendants that wage cuts should be smaller because Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest Airlines Corp. is faring better than expected.The carrier entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2005.

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Gropper said reversing the wage and benefit cuts for flight attendants and other workers “would likely reverse much, if not all, of the financial improvement” the airline has had. That would undermine the very argument flight attendants were making that the cuts should be reversed in the first place, he wrote.

The union has said it is owed two claims worth a total of $2.4 billion, according to Gropper’s ruling, for lost wages as a result of the cuts. Gropper blocked that motion as well.

Northwest, which is Michigan’s biggest passenger air carrier, made cuts in July to save $195 million a year after it couldn’t reach an agreement with the flight attendants.

Those concessions and ones from other workers helped the airline, which reported a $301-million pretax profit in 2006, not counting bankruptcy expenses. Bankruptcy expenses gave it a loss of $2.84 billion.

On March 29, a federal appeals court left a strike ban in place that blocks flight attendants from striking unless they first exhaust the lengthy requirements of airline labor law.

Posted by THE SAINT :: Monday, April 16, 2007 :: ---------------oOo---------------