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Mmm, More Corporate Jackassery!
Apr. 16th, 2007 09:27 am(Via Kevin Drum, who did the math)
Unions put pressure on again-profitable airlines.
"When the airline industry went into a deep slump after the 2001 terrorist attacks, American Airlines' pilots, flight attendants and mechanics agreed to billions of dollars in cuts in wages and benefits to keep the carrier afloat.
Now AMR Corp., American's parent, is back in the black, so much so that 874 top executives will receive more than $150 million in stock bonuses next week.
As for the 57,000 rank-and-file employees, they're seeing red.
"We made huge sacrifices," said Dana Davis, an 18-year American employee and spokeswoman for the Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants.
The airline's 18,000 attendants took an across-the-board 16% pay cut and gave up vacation days. "We're not getting anything back for it," Davis said."
Reminds me of the Safeway thing from a few months back, where they negotiated pay and benefit cuts for all their new employees, because otherwise they'd like go bankrupt or something. Then, oddly enough, a couple of months later, they reported record profits. Funny how that works out. Even with the stock options distributed to employees that are allegedly worth a billion now, that doesn't make up for the pay cut the employees took, and plus, what good are stock options when you don't have the money to buy them?
And then there's the matter of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that was just given to the airlines as bailouts after 9/11.
On the sort of plus side, "Delta Air Lines Inc. stands in contrast. Its chief executive, Gerald Grinstein, has refused to take any extra cash, stock awards, stock options or a pay raise. And Grinstein cut his salary in half during the carrier's bankruptcy proceedings, to $338,000 a year, among the lowest for any major U.S. corporation."
Unions put pressure on again-profitable airlines.
"When the airline industry went into a deep slump after the 2001 terrorist attacks, American Airlines' pilots, flight attendants and mechanics agreed to billions of dollars in cuts in wages and benefits to keep the carrier afloat.
Now AMR Corp., American's parent, is back in the black, so much so that 874 top executives will receive more than $150 million in stock bonuses next week.
As for the 57,000 rank-and-file employees, they're seeing red.
"We made huge sacrifices," said Dana Davis, an 18-year American employee and spokeswoman for the Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants.
The airline's 18,000 attendants took an across-the-board 16% pay cut and gave up vacation days. "We're not getting anything back for it," Davis said."
Reminds me of the Safeway thing from a few months back, where they negotiated pay and benefit cuts for all their new employees, because otherwise they'd like go bankrupt or something. Then, oddly enough, a couple of months later, they reported record profits. Funny how that works out. Even with the stock options distributed to employees that are allegedly worth a billion now, that doesn't make up for the pay cut the employees took, and plus, what good are stock options when you don't have the money to buy them?
And then there's the matter of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that was just given to the airlines as bailouts after 9/11.
On the sort of plus side, "Delta Air Lines Inc. stands in contrast. Its chief executive, Gerald Grinstein, has refused to take any extra cash, stock awards, stock options or a pay raise. And Grinstein cut his salary in half during the carrier's bankruptcy proceedings, to $338,000 a year, among the lowest for any major U.S. corporation."
