Labour talks breakdown at American

TALKS between American Airlines (AA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) have failed again to reach a new contract. The TWU represents 14,000 of AA’s baggage and cargo handlers who are fighting AA’s plans to cut labour costs in the face of declining demand.

The two will now go before the National Mediation Board although it is already mediating two other disputes between AA and its pilots and flight dispatchers.

“The company didn’t seem very serious about getting an agreement,” John Conley, the TWU’s air transport division director, said. “Union negotiators neither ignored the competitive realities that American faces nor ignored the economic fragility of the current environment. We gave them our equivalent of a red tag sale.”