Subscribe
Northwest Airlines: Big business as usual
Business reporters are all flutter as Northwest Airlines (NWA) emerges from bankruptcy today, with stock prices going up and predicted 2007 profits of $794M. There’s little or no mention of the VIP winners and little fish losers— or what this means as one more way Corporations enrich themselves by robbing working Americans.
Opinion: Northwest Airlines: Big business as usual
NWA pilots and flight attendants, with national union leaders and two elected officials, rallied with a Macy’s Thanksgiving parade-style giant inflated rat at the Minnesota State Capitol may 30th, to expose what’s become the latest trend in what should be seen as legalized corporate theft.
As Pat Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants told the couple of hundred workers, ‘Airline executives used the shelter of bankruptcy to extract further concessions from airline employees in an unparalleled show of unscrupulousness and greed. our airlines were led into the no-man’s land of bankruptcy where they were able to cast aside the laws that protect our contracts and further decimate good jobs in our industry. Complicit federal regulators and the U.S. bankruptcy courts closed their eyes to the injustices wrought by the wealthy and powerful corporate executives.”
Flight attendants and pilots will lose 40% to 50% of their pay. imagine what losing half your pay would do to your budget.
For the flight attendants, this means making a salary of $15,000 to $30,000. Salaries for pilots vary considerably, depending on years of experience, what size plane they fly and other factors, but, Internet research shows pay from $60,000 for small-plane pilots to $240,000 for the most experienced large plane pilots. While that might sound like some pilots can absorb the cuts, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) president John Prader told the rally that there are pilots who’ve sold their homes and yanked their kids out of college. They will be flying longer hours, with fewer sick days and higher health care costs. ditto for flight attendants. their pensions will also be cut.
The $400 million cuts to that those who do the actual work of flying and services of NWA will be given to top executives in ‘bonuses”, stock and pensions. Minnesota State Senator, Jim Carlson ran down the mind-boggling numbers:
CEO Doug Steenland gets annual pay of $1.8M, a bonus of $26.5M, stock worth $5.8m and after 15 1?2 years with NWA is guaranteed $947,417 in an annual pension. Outgoing chair Gary Wilson got $2M as he left the company, along selling millions in his stock options. Other executives made out well with their pensions; EVP Information,Phillip Haan gets $555,258 (13.8years of service); EVP Marketing, Tim Griffin gets $559-457 (11.6 years of service); EVP Operations, Andrew Roberts gets $413,968 (7.4 years of service).
Other airlines have declaring bankruptcy since 2002 have pulled off similar scams, citing the post-9/11 downturn. Remember the roughly $5 billion in taxpayers money the airlines got within weeks of the attacks? I wonder how much of that went into executive pockets. NWA mechanics got hit with multiple pay cuts and lay-offs first, as their jobs were shipped off to China. (see the May 31, 2004 Washington Post article on outsourcing mechanics’ jobs; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5138-2004May31_1.html )
There were plenty of workers who had little sympathy for the airline mechanics, in effect, saying,‘They make $25 or 435 an hour—a lot more than I do! Why should I stand with them?” Probably many of those same folks won’t feel much empathy for the pilots and flight attendants either. This is just the latest example of corporate divide and conquer. Besides relocating plants or services to Third World countries with sweatshop wages, no benefits and unions made illegal, hiring undocumented workers or importing H1 visa workers, now, corporations can use bankruptcy as a way to discard labor contracts. Every union representative I asked agreed that airlines ‘declaring bankruptcy’ was just a way to rip-off the workers. The Executives’ bonuses confirms that.
It’s overdue for the 75% of American workers making $50,000 or less (often a hell of a lot less!), to stop identifying with folks like Donald Trump, who makes $1M per show for The Apprentice with a net worth of $1.9 billion—- especially since ‘You’re fired!’ are the words workers most fear.
Walking the mechanics’ picket line a couple of years ago, I remember thinking that the flight attendants and pilots would certainly be next on the chopping block. Airline industry unions’ failure to to unify their struggles and go out on strike together means they got picked off by the executives. This should be a sobering lesson for all workers who want a fighting chance against these corporate rats. An injury to one really is an injury to all.
More information on airline industry unions; www.nwaalpa.org and www.nwaafa.org. Latest statistics on Americans’ wages: http://www.coeinc.org/financialstatistics.htm
LYDIA HOWELL is a Minneapolis journalist, winner of a 2007 Premack Award for public interest journalism, for her reporting on homelessness in PULSE newspaper. MOVING MOUNTAINS is updated daily Monday through Friday at PULSE online: http;//wwww.pulsetc.com
Comments
The AFL-CIO has done
Nice article, to bad you
Nice article, to bad you didn’t happen to talk about the AMFA Technicians who maintained the aircraft that comuters fly day in and day out. These folks fought to try to save jobs and control wage cuts that NWA willed upon its employees. These people took the brunt of the now SCAB airlines.
I really find it hard to
I really find it hard to feel sorry for the remaining employees at NWA.They did not have the guts to stand up and support AMFA to prevent what has happened. We were always hated by the other union workers unless it was contract time for them. They were stupid enough to let NWA divide and conquer. I particularly don’t feel sorry for the pilots. They publicly criticized AMFA for not laying down like they did. Now look at all the crying they’re doing. Informational pickets mean nothing! When has one ever been effective. When the flight attendants could have really done something they reacted like cowards. Changing unions won’t give them any more courage either. That has to come from within. So quit crying and just take your medicine. It’s not like you all weren’t warned. By not sticking together you sealed your fate.
This country is made up of individuals who don’t care about each other. If your neighbors plight isn’t affecting you at that moment, you could care less about him. But later, when you are affected you want that same neighbor to help you. In Europe, when one company union goes out they all go out until the dispute is settled. And it doesn’t take that long when you stick together. Until you fight back as one don’t expect anything to change. Just keep taking it in the shorts.
The writer forgot to
The writer forgot to include, the deck is stacked even more. The Railway Labor Act forbids sympathy strikes. Thank the Congress and Companys for that years ago. NWA goes on with the best management money can buy. They have to pay big money to get and keep help like that. So remember the next time you get a cheap ticket on a 40+ year old DC-9, that it was overhauled by the lowest bidder, worked on by scabs, loaded and serviced by people that don’t have to take FAA random drug tests. Oh and possibly drive equipment into planes and let the customers fly away anyway. Oh, thats still under investigation. More on that later.
Post new comment