United Air mechanics CHICAGO >> Union mechanics at United Airlines have overwhelmingly rejected a contract offer and authorized a strike.
OK strike
They reject a contract and could
walk out as soon as Feb. 20Star-Bulletin news services
The rejected offer included immediate pay raises of as much as 37 percent, but required giving back some of those wages soon to aid the struggling carrier's recovery.
The contract was voted down by 68 percent of the mechanics and in a separate vote, 86 percent of the membership authorized a strike.
A walkout could begin as soon as Feb. 20 unless a last-minute settlement or congressional action blocks it.
United is a major carrier to the Hawaii market, and recently has been expanding since it cut flights in the wake of Sept. 11. The airline this month added a direct Honolulu-Denver flight and on Friday is scheduled to resume two red-eye flights between Hawaii and California.
It has 17 flights a day between the mainland and Hawaii and one a day between Japan and Honolulu.
In Hawaii, United's pact with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers affects 66 mechanics and about 100 others in cabin appearance, ground equipment and maintenance jobs, said Thomas J. Renville, managing director for Hawaii.
If a strike shut down the airline, several hundred other Hawaii jobs could be affected, but Renville did not have a total count early today.
When Northwest Airlines pilots struck for two weeks in 1998, Northwest shut down its operations and laid off some 900 Hawaii workers at the airline and related businesses.
Renville said United hopes there won't be a strike and is working to avoid one. Management and union leaders will meet Friday in Chicago, he said.
A 29-day United pilots strike in 1985 had a huge impact in Hawaii because United was then by far the biggest carrier connecting the mainland and Hawaii. Several airlines now come close to United's size in the Hawaii market and the two local carriers, Aloha and Hawaiian, also have mainland flights.
United mechanics haven't had a raise since 1994 and have worked under the terms of the old contract for 19 months.
The airline's offer was recommended by an emergency board appointed by President Bush in December.
Under the offer, a top United mechanic paid $25.60 an hour would have received a raise to $35.14 immediately and to $37.54 by mid-2004, surpassing the $34 received by American Airlines mechanics.
Several union lodges had recommended a "no" vote because of looming wage givebacks and the fact that employees would not receive retroactive pay for work dating to July 2000 until eight quarterly payments were made beginning in April 2003.
"My advice to Congress and the president remains the same: Stay out of this and we will get it done," the machinists union's top official, International President Tom Buffenbarger, said in a statement.
Some of the airline's 12,800 mechanics and cleaners opposed a contract provision requiring them to accept wage concessions that United might reach with other employees, union leaders said.
United has said employee concessions are necessary if it is to recover from last year's record-setting $2.1 billion loss. The airline laid off 20,000 employees and slashed its schedule last fall. John Creighton, chairman and chief executive of United's parent company, UAL Corp., has told workers the airline needs several billion dollars in concessions in the next few years to help restore profitability, Bloomberg News reported.
United said last month that it is losing about $10 million a day. Its loss last year accounted for about a quarter of the U.S. industry's estimated $9 billion loss.
If the company and the union are unable to reach agreement during the next week, a strike might result in a shutdown of the carrier, some analysts have said. While some analysts said that a shutdown may lead to a United bankruptcy filing, they expect Congress would intervene before then by imposing a settlement and thereby blocking a strike.
"Bankruptcy would be a probable possibility" in the event of a strike, Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Michael Linenberg said in a report yesterday. "Given the potential economic repercussions of a UAL strike, we think the government will do what it takes to 'coerce' all sides toward a settlement."