Though it was 15 years ago, the Communications Workers of America apparently didn’t like taking “no” for an answer in 1998, so it tried again…and the answer was the same (again):
It was still a “no” the second time around for the Communications Workers of America.
The union had tried to organize American Airlines’ passenger service agents but the representation vote failed by 150 votes.
In January, 3,052 workers voted against unionizing while 2,902 agents voted in favor. There are about 9,700 passenger service agents at American and although not all of them voted, the CWA needed only a majority of those cast to win the right to represent workers.
It was the second effort by the CWA to unionize the work group. In 1998, the workers rejected the CWA’s organization effort with only 41 percent of eligible workers voting in favor of joining the union. At the time, American had over 14,000 agents.
Note: The CWA, along with the Machinists, actually tried to unionize the same group of employees in 2001 during American Airlines’ acquisition of TWA. However, that effort failed to garner enough signatures to call for an election.
