Northwest, attendants reach truce

Bankrupt Northwest Airlines Corp. and its flight attendants reached a sort of truce on Monday, with a new round of talks planned and threat of as strike forestalled.

The negotiations to begin Wednesday will defuse, for now, a showdown that began June 6 when 80 percent of voting flight attendants rejected pay cuts and changes to work rules their union leaders had negotiated to save the airline $195 million annually.

That prompted Northwest to seek permission from its bankruptcy judge to nix its contract with flight attendants and impose its own terms — an action the union warned could provoke a strike.

But on Monday, the union said Northwest agreed not to impose its terms until at least June 30, and the union promised not to strike until at least then. The union said it agreed to give the company a 15-day notice before striking if it decides to back out of the agreement.

•German carmaker Volkswagen AG would like to drop its shortened work week and return to the more standard 35 hours — without increasing wages.

But union leaders, whose approval would be needed for such a change, said they would not allow it.

Volkswagen’s head of personnel, Horst Neumann, told reporters on Monday that Volkswagen could slowly phase in the increased work week from the current one just shy of 30 hours, as part of restructuring efforts that top labor representatives have said could lead to up to 20,000 jobs being cut.

“The way to this would need to be worked through,” Neumann said, speaking from the sidelines of a discussion with Germany’s leading industrial union, IG Metall.

Asked whether the longer working hours would be able to guarantee jobs at the company’s six plants in western Germany, Neumann said: “That would be very, very difficult.”

•The parent of job search site Monster.com was subpoenaed on Monday by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York over the timing of stock options grants to executives.

Earlier in the day, Monster Worldwide Inc. had announced it opened an internal investigation of all its stock option grants. The company often granted options dated before steep rises in its share price, a report published on Monday said.

Monster Worldwide said it has retained outside legal counsel for the investigation that will be conducted by a committee of independent directors.