Published 12 May, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 12, 2016
CONTACT: Ori Korin (202) 719-3834
TWU Members Join Deny NAI Coalition for Day of Action at White House
Urge U.S. Government to Enforce U.S.–EU Air Transport Agreement, Defend Fair Competition
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Members from the Transport Workers Union of America’s Air Division joined representatives of organizations representing more than 200,000 aviation workers at a rally in front of the White House today. The coalition is calling on the Obama administration to enforce U.S. trade agreements by denying Norwegian Air International’s (NAI) application to serve the United States with a business plan that ignores U.S. trade policy, erodes fair competition, and threatens U.S. jobs.
TWU was proud to stand with hundreds of workers from the AFL-CIO the Air Line Pilots Association, International; the Allied Pilots Association; the Association of Flight Attendants–CWA; the Association of Professional Flight Attendants; the Communications Workers of America; the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and others to call for a free marketplace and urge the Obama administration to #DenyNAI.
As TWU International President Harry Lombardo declared in an earlier statement, “The administration’s approval of Norwegian Air International’s application sets a very dangerous precedent in U.S. aviation policy, and highlights the serious flaws with our current Open Skies trade policies. When we open up certain routes to these flag-of-convenience subsidiaries that are set up to explicitly violate labor laws, we weaken what little labor protections our trade agreements already have. Plus, we risk thousands of U.S. airline jobs and drive down standards even lower in the airline industry.
“At the end of the day, this is yet another example of how free trade agreements leave American workers high and dry, and how the labor protections in these agreements are basically unenforceable. We won’t stand by while this administration pushes the airline industry further into a low-wage, bottom-of-the-barrel employer.”