The instant Robert Barnett grabbed the tow bars riding on the back of his tractor, he knew he'd made a big mistake. He felt a strain in his lower back, and then a pull and then the dreaded stiffness that comes with any serious back injury. The 10-foot metal bars -- used to push back airplanes from their gates -- weighed about 150 pounds. They had shifted from the center of Barnett's tractor as he drove them across San Francisco International Airport's tarmac.

After re-balancing his load, Barnett worked the rest of his eight-hour shift. But the next day he couldn't get out of bed. He phoned his US Airways supervisor, who told him to get an exam at the airport's medical clinic. Barnett missed three weeks of work while he rested and rehabbed his back. When he returned to work, he was placed on limited duty. Things were fine for a couple of years. Although Barnett was nonunion, US Airways found him office and mailroom work.

In 1992, that all changed. Flight rescheduling shook up the airline workers' shifts. Although Barnett had put in 10 years combined with Pacific Southwest Airlines and US Airways, which bought Pacific in 1987, he was not senior enough keep his light-duty jobs. Barnett soon found himself without a job or medical benefits. He was about to begin a decade-long journey for reinstatement that would take him to the U.S. Supreme Court and cause him to take a hard look at the value of labor unions in today's airline industry.

Barnett's been on both sides of the union debate, having worked for the Teamsters at Pacific until US Airways bought the regional airline and eventually phased out his union. "It's important to have someone in between the company and workers," says Barnett, now 50 and living in San Bruno. "People don't understand that they've never had job security. So you try to explain to people why we have unions."

After several years of flying high, the airline industry continues to find itself grounded by the slumping economy, post-Sept. 11, 2001, fears and the high costs of improved security. Employees up and down airline payrolls are being forced to give back many of the gains their unions won in better times.

Nowhere have concessions been felt more sharply than at US Airways and United Airlines, both of which have within the past seven months filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. United Airlines' parent UAL Corp. on Dec. 9 filed for Chapter 11 after losing $3.2 billion in 2002. This move followed a similar scenario played out by rival US Airways Group Inc., which filed for bankruptcy on Aug. 11, en route to $2.1 billion in losses for the year. Several other large carriers also face strong financial headwinds.

The airlines are trimming back unprofitable routes and experimenting with closed in-flight kitchens. But the most significant cost cuts have come at the expense of airline employees. US Airways' labor costs were almost half of its total operating revenues in 2001, second only to United, according to a U.S. Dept. of Transportation report. In addition to layoffs, US Airways has convinced its pilots, flight attendants, machinists and ground workers to take $734 million in pay cuts. The company needed the cost-savings to secure a $900 million loan guarantee from the Air Transportation and Stabilization Board. With the help of the board and private investors, US Airways hopes to emerge from its bankrupt status by April.

Many say that unions have been a blessing and a curse to airlines since the industry was deregulated in 1978. "They certainly complicate matters in this economy," says Dave Castelveter, a US Airways spokesman. Airline management had to meet with at least 11 unions to make the cuts necessary to keep creditors from liquidating the company. "You're asking someone to give back something they had, so it was a tedious process. But it was one that had a tight deadline."

US Airways' first round of union negotiations yielded $1.2 billion in annual cost cuts. But this wasn't enough. Management in January had to go back to the table and get the unions to agree to changes to worker procedures that the airline estimates will save it another $600 million annually. Now the airline wants a federal bankruptcy judge to terminate the pilots' pension plan, freeing the company from another $1.7 billion in financial obligations.

"Certainly unions have a purpose," Castelveter says. "Does it create a more cumbersome process? Absolutely."

When a company's workforce is unionized, the union establishes and enforces seniority policies. In Barnett's case, he was affected by US Airways' seniority policy because his area of the company was not yet under union jurisdiction. "But seniority is generally the kind of thing that a union would look out for its people on," says Jim Coppess, associate general counsel with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. "If you've got the system written into a contract, that's going to be sufficient."

While US Airways argued that Barnett couldn't prove his request was reasonable, the Supreme Court said that Barnett at least had the right to present a lower court with his circumstances. "There really wouldn't have been much of a dispute among the courts if there was a seniority clause that had been collectively bargained through a union," says Claudia Center, a senior staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center. Center was part of the legal team that pleaded Barnett's case before the Supreme Court.

Today's airline unions are haunted by the large contracts they won in past decades as well as the average worker's distaste for union politics, says Richard Davis, a veteran labor lawyer who represented Barnett from the beginning. "Unionism has been good for our country," he says. "But today's unions have been hurt by unions of the 1960's and 70's that took advantage of the system."

Unions of that era played an important role in establishing pay, work schedules and benefits for their members, says Barnett, whose first union experience came in 1968 as a member of the Retail Clerks' Union. He later joined the Teamsters at Pacific. "I saw things change for unions in the 80's," he says. "The only time people saw their union representatives was during election time. It left a bad taste in their mouths."

Thousands of US Airways employees unionized a few years after Barnett left US Airways. The International Association of Machinists, Locals 141 and 141-M, now represent 11,000 of the airline's fleet service workers, mechanics and ground crew, including the position Barnett once held. These unions continue to find themselves challenged by the economy and conflicted over the proper resolution to their company's financial problems. In January, 61 percent of US Airways' mechanics voted in favor of further cost cutting, while the fleet service workers were even more divided. Just over half approved further cuts.

For US Airways' unions, the prevailing strategy is to keep the company in business so that they have more bargaining power in the long run. "The whole industry is bleeding to death because of the shape of the airlines," says Bill Freiberger, general chairman with the International Associations of Machinists, District 141M. "You can be a knucklehead and flex your muscles and be one of the hundreds of airlines that have gone out of business."

The smarter alternative, Freiberger says, is "shooting yourself in the foot so that you can come back in four or five years and kick the carrier in the ass."

The tug-of-war between management and unions isn't likely to abate anytime soon. Management targets labor in tough economic times because workers' salaries are flexible, says Steven Morrison, a Northeastern University economics professor. It's more plausible to negotiate pay rates than fuel prices, he says.

"Unionization doesn't cause the cost problems, but they are an area to cut," Morrison says. This is because management chose to accept large union contracts a few years ago. "Some of those big contracts came at a particularly bad time for the airlines, but you can't blame the unions for that."

While Robert Barnett awaits the fate of his suite against US Airways, his goal is to restore confidence in labor unions. He has for the past several years been attending labor studies classes at San Francisco State College and wants to play a role in reorganizing airline unions. "The airline unions needed to come down off their cloud," Barnett says. "Everyone needs an affordable wage, but the pendulum swung too far in one direction."

Barnett says that now it's time to bring the relationship between management and unions back to a more centered position.