Judge blocks strike at Northwest

Judge grants request of nation's No. 5 airline to keep flight attendants from striking just hours before it was due to start.
NEW YORK -- A federal judge blocked flight attendants from a strike at Northwest Airlines Friday afternoon, just hours before the union had said it would start to disrupt operations at the nation's No. 5 carrier.
Federal Judge Victor Marrero granted management's request for a temporary injunction against the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, pending an appeal. The union has 7,300 members on the job at the airline.
Marrero ordered the two sides to resume negotiations towards a new labor agreement agreeable to both sides.
Northwest (Charts) issued a statement saying it welcomed the ruling.
"Our customers can continue to book Northwest with confidence," said the company's statement.
In a statement posted on the fight attendant union's Web site Mollie Riley, interim master executive council president said, "Management and the courts can stall us, but they cannot defeat us ... our crusade to protect our careers has only begun".
An attorney Northwest told the court that management believed an agreement could be reached, while a union attorney told the court that if the company approached them with a fair-minded offer, it would consider it, but they had yet to see that from management.
"This hearing today was not meant to be a negotiating session," Marrero said.
He told the two sides to report back to him Wednesday on the progress of talks, adding that it's in the interest of both sides to let cooler heads prevail and reach an agreement themselves, rather than leaving it in the hands of the court.
Trying to fly out of bankruptcy
The airline has been operating under bankruptcy court protection since September 2005, and had demanded $195 million in annual savings from AFA.
But while union negotiators have twice reached tentative agreements with the carrier on labor cost savings, the rank and file have twice rejected such deals in ratification votes, the second time by a 55-45 percent margin.
The union had not planned a complete shutdown of the carrier, which has about 1,200 daily flights. Instead it was planning to use a strategy it calls "Create Havoc Around Our System" or CHAOS, in which flight crews will not report for specific targeted flights, sometimes with little or no notice. That job action had been set to start at 10:01 p.m. EDT Friday.
Still, if the flight attendants had struck, it could have caused serious problems for some passengers as well as the airline's ticket sales.
Passengers whose flights are cancelled could have trouble finding empty seats on other carriers, particularly during the last week of the summer travel seasons. Airlines have filled a record percentage of available seats so far this summer.
While the leisure travel season will essentially come to an end with next weekend's Labor Day holiday, business travelers could soon decide to find alternatives to Northwest, especially if they see reports about stranded passengers on the news, according to travel experts.
"There isn't a high level of fear or concern now but there also won't be a lot of patience or tolerance for any problems," said Janet Wheatley, vice president of operations for Carlson Wagonlit Travel, a major business travel agency based in Minneapolis ahead of the decision. "The business traveler will react quickly if they see disruptions."
Northwest, which weathered a strike by its mechanics a year ago, has been operating under bankruptcy court protections since September.
Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the union, said a week ago that the union is not unwilling to discuss some level of wage or benefit cuts but that "our issue right now is that the concessions they're asking for is entirely too steep."
She said the pay of the most senior flight attendant at Northwest was cut to $33,000 a year from $42,000 a year under terms of the contract just imposed by management and that the hours worked every month increased by one third.
The company reported a net loss of $285 million in the second quarter, although excluding special items related to reorganization, it had a profit of $179 million.
The fuller aircraft and higher fares achieved by airlines this summer has allowed the industry to return to profitability after five years of steep losses, even though jet fuel prices have remained high.