TWA Flight Attendants To Picket APFA Annual Convention

PRLog (Press Release) - Mar 04, 2009 -
Contact: Justice For TWA
Email: communications@apfa.org
Phone: 817.540.0108
Web: http://www.justice4twa.com

BOSTON (March 5, 2009) Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy will be honored today at the annual convention and awards banquet of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), the union representing the flight attendants at American Airlines.  The only question is whether the Senator or his representative will cross a picket line to do so.

A grass-roots group of former TWA flight attendants who became employees of American and members of the APFA when TWA was acquired by American in 2001 have said they will picket the union sponsored event, unless the APFA agrees to revisit the lack of seniority integration.

When APFA became the bargaining representative for the TWA attendants, APFA stripped them of all the seniority they accrued at TWA.  By stapling them to the bottom of the APFA seniority list, the most senior TWA attendant went behind the most junior attendant hired by American.  Seniority governs everything from work schedul es and job security, to vacation and base assignments.  APFA was the only labor organization at American Airlines to deprive the incoming members of all their seniority.  The pilots, mechanics, and ground workers were credited with some seniority.

Because of the unprecedented harm that was visited on the former TWA attendants at the hands of their union, Missouri Senators Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond sponsored an amendment to require seniority integration in any future merger in the airline industry.

According to Ryan Murphy of the University of Minnesota, "Though McCaskill-Bond guarantees basic seniority protection in future airline mergers, the question remains of how to remedy the displacement of the TWA flight attendants.  They are the only group caught in limbo between the regulated era and the McCaskill law".