Delta Pilots Get Green Light to Walk Picket Lines if Contract Is Rejected

Delta´s pilots have voted overwhelmingly to give their union´s leadership the authority to call a strike if the airline is able to toss out the existing contract and impose its own terms, which would include the second big pay cut in less than two years. More than 90% of the union´s members voted in favor.

An arbitration panel must decide by April 15 whether Delta can reject the existing contract.

Delta and the union are still trying to negotiate a voluntary cost-cutting deal, but Lee Moak, leader of the Delta union, insisted the strike threat is not a bluff.

"Management has attempted to mischaracterize the defense of our contract as posturing, gamesmanship and, most recently, saber-rattling," Moak wrote in an April 4 letter to union members. "They are wrong. ... If our contract is rejected, we will strike."

If so, Delta would immediately go to court to argue the union does not have the right to strike when a contract is rejected as part of the bankruptcy process.