WASHINGTON — According to a wire service, a representative of United Airlines mechanics at a hearing on Wednesday accused the carrier of stonewalling in contract talks and urged a presidentially appointed board to recommend a “fair” deal.
“The company has stalled and refused to make any reasonable proposal,” Robert Roach, an International Association of Machinists vice president, told the three-member Presidential Emergency Board on the first day of hearings on the contract dispute between the carrier and the union.
“United clearly and repeatedly promised its IAM-represented employees an ‘industry leading contract,’“ Roach said in written testimony delivered in a closed hearing at National Labor Relations Board headquarters.
“It appears, in retrospect, that those who were making these promises could not muster the political clout or the will to follow through,” Roach said.
The company said it would not respond to the union’s allegations.
“We stand today committed to working cooperatively with the PEB so they can deliver their informed recommendation,” United spokeswoman Susana Leyva said. “We also remain committed to negotiations to reach an agreed solution.”
No contract talks are scheduled, the union said.
The union that represents 15,000 mechanics and related workers at the No. 2 airline has been in talks with the company for two years.
Intervention by President George W. Bush last month prevented a threatened strike and established the emergency board to sort out disputed issues and recommend a settlement.
The board will hear from United representatives on Thursday and wrap up the hearings on Friday, the same day a federal judge in Washington will hear complaints from the union that mediators were wrong to recommend White House intervention.
United and its machinists were thought to be near an agreement but progress stalled as the airline, along with other major carriers, wrestled with declining finances after the Sept. 11 hijack attacks.
Most big U.S. airlines slashed schedules and laid off thousands of workers to cope with a sharp decline in traffic following the attacks. Big carriers have been losing millions of dollars a day.
United, a unit of UAL Corp. (NYSE:UAL – news), posted a $1.16 billion third-quarter loss. That far outpaced the carrier’s rivals.
The union contends that mechanics’ wages at United lag behind other big airlines. The top wage for a United mechanic is $25.60 per hour, compared with $33.10 at Northwest Airlines (NasdaqNM:NWAC – news) and $34 at AMR. Corp’s (NYSE:AMR – news) American Airlines.
The mechanics also are angry that they have yet to win raises after the airline’s pilots negotiated a 24 percent increase in 2000. That deal established a benchmark for airline wage negotiations across the industry.
“We are simply asking that United pay rates consistent with the wages paid to its other employees and comparable employees at other airlines, so that we will be on a level playing field,” Roach said.
The emergency board has less than two weeks to make its settlement recommendation.
The union, which voted almost unanimously to strike in December, is prohibited by the White House action from walking off the job until late February at the earliest.
The last time an emergency board sat for an airline dispute was last spring when Bush appointed a panel to resolve differences between Northwest and its mechanics. The two settled before the panel issued a recommendation.
Bush threatened later in the year to intervene in labor disputes at American and Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL – news) before contract agreements were reached there.
Prior to last year, the mediation board had recommended a presidential intervention in an airline dispute only once in the previous 35 years. Such action, however, is more common in the railroad industry.