Second Time Hopefully the Charm for Virgin America Flight Attendants (inthesetimes.com)

June 13, 2014

Despite previous setbacks, flight attendants at Virgin America are moving to establish the first labor union at the company.

More than 50 percent of Virgin’s estimated 852 attendants have signed authorization cards with the Transport Workers Union (TWU); those cards were submitted last month to the federal government’s National Mediation Board, says TWU Vice President Thom McDaniel. McDaniel expects the Mediation Board to establish a mail-in balloting schedule soon, which is expected to culminate in a final vote count in the second half of July.

If successful, TWU will become the first union at the Burlingame, California-based Virgin, which began operation in 2007 with a specific anti-union slant. The company currently employs about 2,700 pilots, flight attendants and other staff, but none have successfully organized; TWU is the first union to try to do so. Even so, the recent victory of the Air Line Pilots Association in a union election at non-union JetBlue Airways is creating renewed optimism among union organizers in the airline sector, McDaniel says.

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