2 Aloha unions approve pay cuts

By Kelly Yamanouchi
Advertiser Staff Writer

Two more Aloha Airlines unions have ratified new labor agreements including pay cuts, as the airline works toward securing final approval for a $40.5 million federal loan guarantee.

About 93 percent of Association of Flight Attendants members who voted in electronic voting completed yesterday chose to ratify 10 percent pay cuts.

The union represents more than 370 flight attendants.

Members of the Transport Workers Union, which represents about 26 dispatchers and flight schedulers, approved similar pay cuts in a vote earlier this week.

Those votes came after the International Association of Machinists Local 1245 said earlier this week that more than 80 percent of its members who cast ballots voted to ratify the plan, which calls for a 10 percent reduction in gross pay for three years, with some smaller increases in basic wages during the latter part of that period and beyond.

There is one union ratification outstanding. The Air Line Pilots Association, which has about 278 employees, was in talks yesterday to determine whether to allow union executives to approve the new contract or to put it up for a membership vote.

Aloha Airlines earlier asked all of its roughly 3,000 employees to take pay cuts to save $37 million during the next three years in an effort to get a federal loan guarantee it applied for earlier this year.