Union activists suffered a setback Wednesday when a majority of Delta Air Lines flight attendants rejected union representation. But labor activists predict that a union will represent attendants brought together under a Delta-Northwest Airlines merger.
For 79 years, Delta's attendants have worked outside of the organized labor movement, but 40 percent of them voted in recent weeks to join a union.
"Those supporters, combined with strong union support at Northwest, will clearly be enough for the flight attendants to win union representation after the merger with Northwest is finalized," Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), said in a prepared statement.
Friend and other union supporters are using simple math to project that they will have enough votes to keep Northwest attendants under the union umbrella and to bring Delta employees into the fold.
The National Mediation Board reported that 5,306 of Delta's 13,382 flight attendants voted in favor of union representation. If a substantial majority of Northwest's 7,500 attendants join forces with the Delta attendants who now want a union, they would have enough votes to ensure that labor leaders negotiate a contract for them under the merged Delta.
In 2002, only 29 percent of Delta's attendants voted in favor of joining a union.
Mollie Reiley and Danny Campbell, former Northwest labor union officials who advised the Delta attendants, said that they expect the two attendant groups ultimately will be blended into an AFA unit. Reiley and Campbell were leaders of the organizing drive that brought the AFA to Northwest in 2006.
If the Delta and Northwest attendants forgo union representation, they would be "subject to whatever management deems is appropriate for cost efficiencies," Reiley said. She also noted how union support at Delta has grown since the last election.