Northwest, union fight leads to legal controversy By Simon Hirschfeld NEW YORK, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A court battle between Northwest Airlines Corp. <NWAC.O> and its flight attendants' union over an alleged sickout has run into controversy after the company received court approval to search union members' personal computers. The No. 4 U.S. airline hired Ernst & Young technicians to copy data on computer hard drives at flight attendants' homes and union offices, as it seeks to identify those involved in a New Year's sickout that forced cancellation of 300 flights. Arthur Boylan, a magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minn., where Northwest is based, issued the subpoena, arising from a lawsuit filed by Northwest against the Teamsters local representing Northwest's 11,000 flight attendants. Ernst & Young technicians searched e-mail on 14 computers using the keyword "sickout," Northwest spokesman Jon Austin said, as the company attempts to determine the identity of posters of anonymous messages on independent, union-related Web sites run by Northwest flight attendants. He declined to comment on what the searches had revealed. Northwest is accusing the site-operators, Kevin Griffin, of Honolulu, and Ted Reeve, of North Hollywood, Calif., with inciting the sickout and being part of HAVOC, a group Northwest believes organized wildcat job actions. Griffin and Reeve contend they did not advocate a sickout, and postings on their sites told flight attendants to act within the law. Their lawyers say allowing a legal adversary to search personal property violates their clients' rights. "We are unaware of precedents for a search of this kind under these circumstances," said Barbara Harvey, a Detroit lawyer with expertise representing rank-and-file union members. "An employer does not have the right to examine the private property of a person just because the person is an employee." Harvey said the promise that only relevant material will be examined is insufficient to justify searching material that includes personal information. Northwest believes the searches are not intrusive because they are conducted by a third party, and defense lawyers will have a chance to object to any documents before they are given to the company. "Rules of federal procedure have allowed for this kind of discovery since 1970," Austin said, referring to producing computers for court-requested information. Harvey said in a case not involving allegations of destroyed or tampered evidence, requested documents would normally be produced by those in possession, along with a statement vouching for their completeness and authenticity. Northwest asked for searches by computer experts because it wants access to deleted files not normally retrievable by non-technicians. It is seeking to identify the authors of anonymous Web site postings which advocated a sickout. The company is now also going to Griffin's Internet service providers for the information. Griffin and Reeve are the only union members not represented by the union's attorneys, as they did not hold union posts. "We are confident that our clients did not incite the sickout," said Paul Levy, a lawyer for Ralph Nader's Public Citizen who has joined Harvey in representing Griffin and Reeve. Neither Griffin nor Reeve called in sick, he added. The case against other union members has been suspended after a court-approved agreement between Northwest and the union, in which the union agreed to abide by the temporary restraining order, issued by federal Judge Donovan Frank, preventing job actions as the two sides negotiate. The union contract became amendable Aug. 1996.
