Posted on: Friday, April 1, 2005

Flight attendants nix Continental pay cuts

By Kristen Hays
Associated Press

HOUSTON — Continental Airlines flight attendants rejected a tentative deal to cut wages and benefits, but the nation's fifth-largest carrier said it would implement concessions approved by other unions including those representing pilots and mechanics.

Continental said yesterday it would continue discussions with flight attendants, noting that their "current levels of pay and benefits for flight attendants are not sustainable."

"The unions with ratified agreements have chosen to go forward and implement their contracts despite the flight attendants' failure to ratify," the airline said.

Joseph Tiberi, spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents Continental's flight attendants, said a majority of the airline's 9,000 flight attendants who voted had rejected the 45-month concession deal.

The deals approved by the other unions along with $169 million in previously disclosed wage and benefit cuts affecting nonunion employees would produce about $418 million of the carrier's goal to cut costs by $500 million.

Nearly 93 percent of the airline's 3,948 eligible pilots voted, with 58.4 percent in favor and 41.6 percent opposed, the Air Line Pilots Association said in a release posted on its Web site.

But the pilots' union had said final acceptance of its deal hinged on all other employee groups approving similar concessionary contracts.

Pilot Jay Panarello, chairman of the master executive council of Continental's pilots' union, said pilots "stepped up to help the company survive," but noted that the group's concessions "have always been based on the condition that all employee groups share in the cost cuts."

Shares of Continental rose 15 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close at $12.04 on the New York Stock Exchange.