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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/nwa-f11.shtml
Date: 2/14/00
Time: 8:41:33 AM
Remote Name: 205.188.192.174
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WSWS : Workers Struggles : Airlines
Action against dissidents in airline contract
struggle
US court orders seizure of Northwest flight
attendants' home computers
By Jerry White
11 February 2000
Use this version to print
Northwest Airlines last week began
court-authorized searches of the home
computers of flight attendants whom the airline
suspects organized a sick-out over the New
Year's holiday. Two computer forensic experts,
hired by Northwest, seized the computers of a
rank-and-file flight attendant who operates a web
site and electronic bulletin boards, and copied
the hard drives from the computers of 21
individuals, including private e-mail messages.
The investigators also spent two hours searching
computers at the Bloomington, Minnesota offices
of Teamsters Local 2000, which represents
Northwest's 11,000 flight attendants.
Last month, after a high number of sick calls
from flight attendants forced the company to
cancel flights over New Years, Northwest sued
the union and individually-named flight attendants,
alleging they had violated federal law by
orchestrating a sick-out. US District Judge
Donovan Frank in St. Paul, Minnesota agreed
and issued a temporary restraining order
prohibiting Teamsters Local 2000, its leaders
and specific flight attendants from encouraging or
participating in �sick-outs� or other illegal job
actions. The judge gave Northwest the right to
seek evidence relating to the job action, including
searching through the e-mails of 43 individuals,
well beyond the number of people named in the
original lawsuit.
The company has particularly targeted two
dissident flight attendants, Kevin Griffin of
Honolulu and Ted Reeve of North Hollywood,
California, who operate web sites and electronic
bulletin boards that have been critical of both the
company and the union. Flight attendants have
been fighting for a new contract since September
1996 and are anxious to recoup concessions that
the union granted to the now highly profitable
airline earlier in the decade. Last August, flight
attendants used Internet forums to organize the
overwhelming defeat of a contract proposal
endorsed by Local 2000 and Teamsters General
President James Hoffa.
Northwest accuses Griffin and Reeve of inciting
the alleged job action. The company's attorneys
cited anonymous postings calling for a sick-out
on Griffin's message board
nwaflightattendants.com during the request for a
temporary restraining order. These messages
were usually followed by urgings from Griffin that
participants not advocate illegal activities.
Griffin, a veteran Northwest flight attendant, was
forced to surrender his Packard Bell desktop and
Fujitsu laptop to investigators from the firm of
Ernst & Young last week. The two examiners
flew to Hawaii from their Washington DC and
Texas offices to confiscate the machines.
Afterwards Griffin said, �I didn't think they had
the right to come and get your home computer.�
Jon Austin, a spokesman for Northwest,
defended the search, saying, �In the age we live
in, the normal course of discovery includes taking
depositions, producing documents and these
days more than ever looking into the content of
computers. So many documents and
communications these days are purely electronic
in nature,� he said.
The threat of court-authorized searches of home
computers has already had its desired effect.
Postings to Griffin's web site have slowed down
significantly. Of those who aren't afraid to
comment in the open forum section of the web
site, a much smaller percentage of the writers
are identifying themselves, Griffin said. �It's like
they are running scared, with good reason,� he
added.
Reeve said the judge's order means that he must
be particularly cautious about what information
he posts on his own site, �lest the company
accuse him of supporting a sick-out and
therefore violating the district court's order.�
Free speech advocates denounced the
searches. �This kind of precedent could have a
very chilling effect on the exercise of speech
rights, and could set a very bad precedent for
privacy,� said Jerry Berman, executive director
for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a
leading privacy rights organization based in
Washington DC.
�If Northwest succeeds in gaining access to the
hard drives of the home computers of its
employees, it will certainly put a chill on the uses
employees everywhere make of their home
computers,� said Beth Givens, director of the
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.
The concern for democratic rights was not
echoed, however, by the flight attendants' own
union, Teamsters Local 2000. On the contrary,
earlier this week the Teamsters officials entered
into a deal with Northwest and the federal court
that paves the way for the continued persecution
of the rank-and-file flight attendants.
On Sunday, February 6, Northwest Airlines and
Teamsters officials reached an agreement that
suspended legal action against the union and
halted the discovering proceedings against 19 of
the 21 individuals named in the lawsuit�all
officials in the local union. The temporary
settlement does not apply to Kevin Griffin and
Ted Reeve, who were not even invited to the
settlement talks.
The following day Judge Frank gave his approval
to the deal and ruled that legal action against the
union would be suspended while negotiations for
a new contract continued. The judge also ruled
that if a settlement were reached and ratified by
union members, Northwest's lawsuit would be
dismissed. But if flight attendants violated the
ban on job actions, or if negotiations collapsed
and a legally-sanctioned strike was threatened,
the lawsuit could be restarted.
Under the settlement Griffin and Reeve, who
were not represented by union attorneys
because they are not Teamsters officers, are still
subject to the company's discovery efforts and a
possible injunction if the restraining order is
violated. They face the threat of potentially
massive fines at the very least, if not
imprisonment. In addition Northwest has filed a
lawsuit in Honolulu in an attempt to identify
anonymous writers who have allegedly libeled
company officials on his web site. The two
defendants face a February 15 hearing before
Judge Frank.
The Teamsters bureaucracy undoubtedly
welcomes the efforts to suppress their members'
use of the Internet. Since organizing the e-mail
campaign that led to a 69 percent defeat of the
contract last summer, these web sites have been
the focus of continued rank-and-file opposition to
the union's efforts to impose a pro-company
contract.
The Local 2000 leadership has rejected the
demands of workers on the web site as too
radical. Local president Billie Davenport
denounced the dissidents, saying, �I don't want
this union to run on the voices of a small minority.
Don't think that what 300 to 400 members are
screaming for is what 11,000 members want.� A
former local leader, Mollie Reiley, added, �We've
got a group advocating anarchy.�
Davenport said Monday that the union complied
with the court's order and never tried to disrupt
Northwest's flight operations and never would
without the permission of the National Mediation
Board. Asked by a newspaper reporter from the
Minneapolis-based Star Tribune why she did not
fight harder against the searching of home
computers, she said the union had nothing to
hide and �we believe there was enough privacy
protection.�
While the union agreed to suppress job actions
by its members, at the same time it collaborated
with the courts to deny workers their right to due
process. Neither the union nor the court even
notified Griffin and Reeve that they were named
in Northwest's lawsuit, and therefore the workers
have had no opportunity to defend themselves.
Nor were they allowed to participate in a January
7 telephone conference in which the union
agreed that the temporary restraining order be
extended to February 19.
Both workers are pursuing legal action against
the trampling of their First Amendment rights,
and are seeking to present their case to the
appeals court. Their attorney, Barbara Harvey,
said, �A grave injustice has been done to these
two individuals, because the order is a blatant
case of restraint of speech that has historically
been forbidden.�
http://www.nwaflightattendants.com/forum1/
