The unfriendly and unfair skies…
During bad times managers often ask employees to make sacrifices. Take cuts in pay, work extra hours, and in the end we will all prosper.
Well, that’s not the way it works in the airline industry it appears. Now that so many U.S. carriers are back from the brink, and actually bringing in some solid profits, you’d expect executives to want to spread the money around. Alas, that’s not happening. Even though top dogs at the big carriers got hefty bonuses recently, the workers who made concessions when these companies were in bankruptcy court, or nearing bankruptcy, are out of luck. No plans to give them some money back, and few signs that work conditions will improve.
Check out my analysis on Northwest and the airline industry on MSNBC.com today.
Should we be expecting companies to share?
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:47 pm
It seems to me that airline executives are also uninterested in reinvesting in customer service lost during tight times. Airline delays and cancellations are up and customer service is bad, bad, bad. Happy flying!
August 8th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
If you go back about 40 years, just about everyone from pilots to mechanics, on board personel and even skycaps were ‘guaranteed’ pensions with absolutely nothing given by those guaranteed to have retirement benefits. USAir, or Piedmont or Allegheny Airlines, whomever you worked for now has virtually twice as uch ‘guaranteed’ funds for pensioners than operating expenditures. Remember, it is a ‘global economy’ we have in this day and age where you can email and conference with your subordinates say in Japan, and never step one foot there. Airlane delays are at an all time high domestically, however there are far more flights available than ever before. The problem is the entire industry does not rely on large corprations to be an entity within itself. Imagine an All Disney airline. When UPS attempted to create a corporate airline, it was quickly denounced as forcing other airlines meet some sort of a lower standard. The same can be said about Hooters Airline. You’d think competition would provoke a better system.