FLIGHT ATTENDANTS DEMAND CONGRESS HOLD HEARING ON Broken GOVERNMENT AGENCY – NATIONAL MEDIATION BOARD

For Immediate Release                Contact: Darlene Dobbs – 202-434-0584

September 8, 2008

Washington, DC – The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) International President Patricia Friend, along with Communication Workers of America President Larry Cohen, sent a joint letter to Congress today demanding a public hearing be held regarding the conduct of the National Mediation Board (NMB)  prior to the finalization of the merger between Northwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines. In the letter to Chairman Edward Kennedy of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, and Chairman James Oberstar of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, AFA-CWA asked for public hearings in order to shine a spotlight on the overwhelmingly anti-worker policies of the current NMB.

“For years there has been insufficient Congressional oversight of the NMB and little attention paid to its policies, personnel and actions,” stated the Friend-Cohen letter. “Specifically, the NMB has failed to even investigate illegal employer misconduct as flight attendants at Delta recently sought to join AFA-CWA, and at the same time the agency is racing to ram through new regulations to make employee representation more difficult.”

The NMB is the federal agency in charge of enforcing the Railway Labor Act, which protects the workers’ rights to organize unions and engage in free and fair collective bargaining in the U.S. transportation industry. The NMB is run by a three-person board who are appointed by the President of the United States. Over the past eight years, the NMB has not only neglected their basic role in protecting workers, but have served corporate interest time and time again.

In July, the NMB proposed new provisions and edits to several longstanding statutes which if adopted, would significantly hinder transportation union elections in the future. These rule changes come just months before a proposed merger between Delta and Northwest is expected to be finalized. 

A thorough hearing would look at the fact that the current Chair of the NMB is a former employee and lobbyist for Northwest Airlines at a time when many decisions impacting the merger between her former employer and Delta are being made by the NMB. In the recent election for Delta flight attendant representation, the NMB turned a blind eye to Delta management’s unprecedented anti-union, voter suppression campaign. Additionally, they allowed Delta management to keep a deceased flight attendant on the eligibility list.

One of the NMB’s most onerous rules has been to maintain an election participation rate of 50 percent plus one. In an election where the total number of votes cast equals less than 50 percent of the total employee group, the entire vote is declared invalid. This standard is out of step with every democratic election in this country.