AP
American Airlines Attendants Vote
Wednesday February 27, 12:44 am ET By David Koenig, AP Business Writer

American Airlines Flight Attendants Elect New Leader As They Head Into Tough Negotiations

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- American Airlines flight attendants on Tuesday night elected a leader of their 1993 strike as the new president of their union, joining pilots in picking a more aggressive leader as they head into difficult contract negotiations.

Laura Glading, based in New York, defeated former president John Ward to lead the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, according to both candidates' Web sites.

Ward was president in 2003 when the union narrowly approved $340 million in annual wage and benefit concessions to keep American, the nation's largest airline, out of bankruptcy.
Glading said she will demand that flight attendants get those concessions back this year "with interest." That could set the union on a collision course with management, which says American is already at a labor cost disadvantage with other airlines.

"It's been five years since we made those significant concessions, and the cost of living has gone up," Glading said. "We can recover all those things and make significant gains."
The flight attendants' union is expected to begin negotiations on a new contract in the next few weeks. In the airline industry, such talks often drag on for years, and federal law makes it difficult for workers to go on strike.

Glading said it was too soon to talk about a strike, but said the flight attendants "are willing to do whatever needs to be done." Glading served on the union's board during a 1993 strike. She also served on the committee that negotiated a 2001 contract that was then seen as the highest in the industry. She will be sworn in as president April 1.

The current president, Tommie Hutto-Blake, did not run for re-election. She ousted Ward in a disputed election in 2004 that at one point Ward appeared to win. This time, Ward carried his home base of Dallas and a smaller outpost in Boston. Glading won in most other bases, including New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Glading and Ward finished ahead of two others in an election last month, but Glading didn't get a majority, requiring the runoff that ended Tuesday.

It appeared that union members also elected members of Glading's slate of nominees to become vice president, secretary and treasurer. Ward did not return a message seeking comment.
Last year, American's pilots ousted their president and replaced him with a more confrontational leader, Lloyd Hill, who proposed a 53 percent pay raise for pilots -- quickly rejected by the airline -- and called executive bonuses "blood money."

American's mechanics and bag handlers are represented by the Transport Workers Union. The three unions combined agreed to $1.6 billion in wage and benefit concessions in 2003. Fort Worth-based American is a unit of AMR Corp.