Flight attendants reject dues increase
AMERICAN Airlines flight attendants have rejected a 44 percent union dues increase intended to cover expenses from a five-day strike in November. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) said it had set aside $1 million of its $6.4 million budget for contract negotiations and other strike expenses, but ended up spending about $2.6 million.
The proposal to raise dues from $25 to $36 a month was defeated 54 percent to 46 percent, or 5,552 votes to 4,722, according to Randy Edwards, a union spokesman. The union represents about 22,000 American workers. Flight attendants earn between $14,000 and $36,000 a year.
The union has been forced to negotiate payment schedules with its outside attorneys and long-distance telephone carrier, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Saturday. Mr. Edwards says the union is not heavily in debt and expects to be able to meet its payroll and pay its bills.
President Clinton ended the strike Nov. 22 when he persuaded American Chairman Robert Crandall and APFA President Denise Hedges to submit to binding arbitration. Edwards says the union hopes arbitrators will make a decision by late fall. Company officials do not expect a decision until the spring or summer of 1995. Former BCCI exec extradited to US
THE top executive of the former Bank of Credit and Commerce International was extradited to the United States on Saturday, legal sources said.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Swaleh Naqvi left the United Arab Emirates on an early morning flight accompanied by a security officer. They declined to say who accompanied Mr. Naqvi or where he was going.
But a US diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said Naqvi was taken on ``a noncommercial US flight'' to Washington.
Naqvi has been at the comfortable Police Club compound since September 1991, when he was seized from BCCI headquarters in Abu Dhabi along with a large number of executives. They were questioned about investigations related to the irregularities that brought the banking empire down.
Naqvi was to face related charges filed in American courts.
Charges against Naqvi and BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi were leveled by a New York grand jury in the first criminal proceedings against the collapsed bank in July 1991. The two men are charged with swindling up to $20 billion from depositors around the world through fraud, falsifying bank records, illegal money laundering, and larceny.
