WASHINGTON — The Association of Flight Attendants turned over thousands of petition cards Wednesday to the National Mediation Board to force a union vote for 20,000 flight attendants at Delta Air Lines.

        Organizers hope the mediation board, which reviews labor disputes, will authorize a mail ballot later this year in what would be the largest union drive in the history of the airline industry. Delta, which oper ates its second-largest hub at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, is the least unionized of the nation's major air carriers and has urged flight attendants to reject the union.

        “We have a right to a voice on the job,” Milly Hastings, a flight attendant based at the airline's headquarters in Atlanta, said at a labor rally in a downtown Washington park. “We have a right to representation.

        “We have the right to a legally binding contract.”

        Delta countered Wednesday by noting that its flight attendants are the highest paid in the airline indus try. A union would undermine the trust and teamwork between labor and management, the carrier argues.

        Sharon Wibben, senior vice president for in-flight services at Delta, said the carrier is confident that flight attendants will remain union-free.

        “We already provide for our flight attendants what unions at other carriers cannot provide. Delta flight attendants are the envy of the industry,” she said. “Our flexibility allows us to listen to our people, to act promptly and to treat people as individuals.”

        A few dozen flight attendants and organizers symbolically carted several cardboard boxes of petition cards to the mediation board's offices.

        Union officials said organizers had collected cards during the past year from more than the 35 percent of Delta flight attendants necessary to force a vote, and had gathered endorsements from more than 50 percent of attendants during a three-year campaign.

        More than half of Delta flight attendants would have to vote to unionize for the drive to be successful.

        Ruth Illies, a union activist and flight attendant in Cincinnati, where more than 1,000 Delta attendants are based, said the union campaign is more about job security and bargaining power than any specific complaints about pay and benefits.

        Flight attendants also watched as Delta pilots, the only major segment of the carrier's work force that belongs to a union, negotiated better pay and benefits this year. Labor talks between the pilots and Delta, the nation's third-largest carrier, came a week away from a strike before a con tract was approved.

        “I'm glad it's finally going to happen,” Ms. Illies said of a possible union vote. “Everything we have can be taken away in a second. We've seen how vulnerable you can be without the protection of a contract.”

        The last significant organizing campaign at Delta failed when baggage handlers, loaders and ramp workers voted not to join the Transport Workers Union last year.

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