Union Irked : TWA Seeks to Recruit 2,000 Attendants

Trans World Airlines has launched a nationwide search for 2,000 recruits for its flight attendant school, a campaign that representatives of TWA’s 7,000 current flight attendants say is an attempt to train and hire replacements should contract talks end with workers walking a picket line.

“The union is saying this is preparation for a strike,” said Stan Henderson, in charge of TWA’s flight attendant training and recruitment programs. “If it comes to that, these people could be used for that purpose, but that’s not our intention. We’re simply looking for people to train in expectation of openings next year.”

Henderson said that those who complete TWA’s training program have no guarantee of being hired but that the company typically offers jobs to 85% of the graduates. For the 2,000 trainees now being sought, that means 1,700 probably could be hired.

Henderson said that TWA will need 200 of the new attendants to staff several new planes that it plans to buy late next year. He said the remaining 1,500 will be needed to fill vacancies stemming from an early retirement incentive program that TWA is likely to include in any new flight attendant contract.

New York financier Carl C. Icahn, who won control of TWA in August after a bruising takeover battle with competing bidder Texas Air Corp., already has negotiated pay and benefits concessions with the airline’s pilots and machinists unions. But no similar agreement has been reached with the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants.

The recruitment for flight attendant trainees began during the last two weeks. The union, in letters handed out at recruitment seminars Monday at the Amfac Hotel in Los Angeles, told prospective trainees: “We have a dispute with TWA, and TWA is putting you in the middle. What you’re not being told is that TWA is training you to take our jobs if we strike.”

The letter says that prospective flight attendants are being asked to pay the full training fee of $2,500 to get only three weeks’ training rather than the usual five. It asks potential trainees, if hired, to honor picket lines.

The flight attendants have been without a contract since July, 1984, but negotiations were broken off last summer until Icahn’s ownership of TWA is made official by a vote of TWA shareholders. Balloting is expected to be completed within weeks, and contract talks probably will resume by year-end, union and company officials said.

A spokesman for the union said that it has offered to accept pay cuts totaling $5,000 to $6,000 a year for three years but that Icahn wants cuts of $9,000.

“We’re willing to make concessions, but that’s just too high,” the spokesman said.