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Minneapolis (AP) ― Northwest Airlines Corp. flight attendants overwhelmingly rejected pay cuts Tuesday, and the bankrupt airline quickly threatened to impose its terms on them with or without a judge's permission. Flight attendants said they may strike if Northwest does that.

Northwest said a strike would be illegal and sought to have a bankruptcy judge block one.

The Professional Flight Attendants Association said 80 percent of its members voted against the deal, which included a 21-percent pay cut and work-rule changes. It would have saved Northwest $195 million a year.

Northwest baggage handlers and ramp workers voted down their own tentative agreement March 7 and later re-negotiated a slightly better deal. That may have encouraged flight attendants to do the same thing. But Northwest warned them in a May 12 letter that that wouldn't happen.

Northwest made its deals with workers under the threat that a bankruptcy judge would allow it to throw out its union contracts and impose even harsher terms. The judge never had to rule on that issue because each union made a deal instead.

But on Tuesday, Northwest asked the judge to allow it to throw out its flight attendant contracts. Importantly, it warned in a bankruptcy court filing that even without the judge's permission, it would impose its terms on flight attendants "soon." The union did not dispute Northwest's legal right to do that. However, Northwest said it would prefer getting a judge's ruling to acting alone.

There's no guarantee that the judge would rule in Northwest's favor. A judge has issued similar rulings only twice in recent airline cases -- Delta subsidiary Comair and Northwest feeder carrier Mesaba Aviation Inc. -- and both times the judge barred the airlines from imposing cuts on workers.

Northwest said it is losing $30 million a month on an ongoing basis, although its most recent two monthly financial filings showed that it would have made $14 million in April and $29 million in March if not for reorganization expenses.

"Continuing the status quo would be dangerous in the short term, and potentially fatal in the long term," it wrote in its bankruptcy filing.

Those imposed terms would be harsher than the ones flight attendants rejected. In its filing, Northwest said it would assign up to 30 percent of flight attendant hours on overseas flights to foreigners, a provision that the union flight attendants fought bitterly. Other provisions included eliminating pay for government-mandated training, and paying just $5 an hour for Web-based training.

Union President Guy Meek said he called the company as soon as he got the results, and offered to negotiate more. He described the conversation as "short and to the point."

"They weren't too talkative when I gave them the vote count," he said.

Meek said flight attendant morale is already low and would plummet if Northwest forces pay and rules that workers didn't agree to.

"If the company elects to impose an agreement before we get back to the judge, I think that's basically suicidal to them, because of the fact that 80 percent have voiced their opinion loud and clear that the proposal is harsh and overreaching," Meek said. He said flight attendants were upset the most about the 51/2-year length of the contract, new policies for sick leave, and vacation.

Mike Becker, the airline's Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Labor Relations, said he deal that flight attendants rejected "was a product of extensive negotiations involving substantial compromise on the part of Northwest Airlines and PFAA's negotiating committee."

The rejected contract would have cut hourly pay by 21 percent and would have left flight attendants making roughly $18,000 to $43,000 a year. The union said that increases in health insurance premiums and other concessions would have meant losing the equivalent of 40 percent of their pay. Union leaders never endorsed the contract.

The union said the vote was 5,195 against and 1,270 for. The PFAA represents about 9,300 flight attendants, although some were prevented from voting because they weren't current on their dues.

The rejection is a setback for Northwest's reorganization efforts. That's because none of its new union contracts take effect until they all do. That means that provisions in the ratified pilot contract allowing Northwest to start a regional jet subsidiary are on hold, along with plans to restructure how ground operations are handled outside Northwest's hubs.

"Northwest has already had to pull down flights from some of its summer schedule because the agreements it has made with its unions have not been implemented," it wrote in the bankruptcy filing. Without savings from flight attendants and ground workers "in the very near future, it will be forced to pull down its schedule for the remaining summer months, and lose additional millions of dollars in revenue."

Baggage handlers and ramp workers are voting this week on whether to accept their own pay cuts and work rule changes, after rejecting an earlier deal. Ballots will be counted beginning Friday.

Northwest has a history of labor troubles. When mechanics struck in August, Northwest kept flying and eventually hired permanent replacements. Its pilots struck in 1998.

Northwest flew through the mechanic's strike after more than a year of preparation to hire contractors and outside firms to maintain its planes. But while Northwest publicly announced its plans for that strike, there have been no indications of preparations for a flight attendants strike.

The threatened strike by flight attendants puts them in a legal gray area. Airline-union relations are governed by the Railway Labor Act, which requires mediation and then a 30-day cooling-off period before any strike. But unions have argued they have a right to strike if airlines force pay cuts on them.

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