Chicago
AFL-CIO Executive Council statement
As the busy summer travel season continues, Americans are constantly reminded that our nation’s airlines too often show little respect for their own passengers and growing hostility toward their employees. Flight delays are now daily occurrences and workers are frustrated by CEOs who are more interested in stock options than running airlines on which passengers and workers can rely. AFL-CIO aviation unions have been at the forefront of fighting for the jobs, rights and livelihoods of the thousands of workers who have borne the brunt of corporate greed and mismanagement by both airlines and the Bush administration’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, reckless job cuts have become all too common, pension obligations have been dumped and draconian changes to collective bargaining agreements—often through the use of or the threat of bankruptcy—have been forced on employees. Air carriers claim drastic cost-cutting and outsourcing, no matter the impact on workers and passengers, are the only ways to keep airlines flying and out of bankruptcy or liquidation. Yet airline CEOs—just a few years after securing billions from Congress in a taxpayer bail-out after the terrorist attacks—eagerly gave themselves millions in bonuses and stock options, justifying these payouts as necessary to keep senior management “motivated” to perform well.
With employee morale and passenger satisfaction at all-time lows, airlines should be more worried about the deterioration of this industry and investing in their front-line workers than in the bank accounts of their top brass. The reality is that passengers and workers face an aviation system that is mismanaged, understaffed at key front-line positions and apparently incapable of consistently delivering basic on-time performance. For the first five months of 2007, only 74 percent of flights were on time, marking the industry’s worst on-time performance since the government began tracking data in 1995. Flight schedules set by air carriers often ignore the laws of physics and would require time travel to actually work. The old and tired tactic of blaming virtually every delay on weather is simply no longer acceptable, and carriers have to recognize their own culpability in failing to run airlines that can serve the needs of passengers efficiently.
When carriers cut to the bone, as they have since 9/11, and outsource everything possible, operations are going to suffer. The fact is that since 9/11, approximately 160,000 aviation jobs have been lost. And a new government report finds that 64 percent of aircraft maintenance work is now outsourced—much of it to foreign repair facilities where safety and security standards fall well short of U.S. rules. When in-house mechanics have to redo work originally performed overseas, delays throughout the system should be expected and safety concerns will grow.
The FAA has contributed to this crisis by failing to keep up with and adequately plan for staffing shortages and retiree trends among controllers, technicians, inspectors and other key personnel. In fact, there are nearly 1,100 fewer air traffic controllers working at U.S. facilities today than three years ago, despite increased traffic. About 70 percent of controllers will become eligible to retire through 2015 and 50 percent of FAA inspectors are eligible for retirement by 2010. It takes years to recruit and train workers for these safety-sensitive positions and the FAA has simply mismanaged and ignored this growing problem. It is also relevant that labor/management relations at the FAA are at an all-time low, as the administrator continues to impose terms and conditions on its workforce instead of engaging in true collective bargaining.
While retention of executives seems to be a motivation behind excessive compensation and bonuses, one has to wonder how the airlines will fill and retain key front-line positions with qualified workers as once-stable jobs have turned into a roulette wheel of economic uncertainty and frustration. For example, starting pay for a flight attendant at one regional airline is now $13,000 per year—uniforms not included. Starting pilots can earn as little as $17,000 at regional airlines. Through a series of concessions, Northwest pilots absorbed cuts totaling $623 million a year, or $4 billion through 2011. Guaranteed pensions, once a staple benefit negotiated with the major carriers, are now about as common as an on-time flight out of a major hub airport. Since 9/11, more than 195,000 aviation employees have lost their pension plans originally worth $20 billion.
Threatening bankruptcy in 2003, American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey told workers to pull together and “we would share in the pain and share in the gain.” Since then, ground workers at American Airlines have created $700 million in recurrent savings for the company and $100 million in new revenue from in-sourcing aircraft repair work from other airlines. But American management forgot the “share the gain” part of the equation. In 2007, American announced its top executives will split close to $200 million in stock bonuses while workers will get next to nothing. American’s entire profit in 2007 was $231 million.
Not be outdone, United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton collected $40 million in total compensation last year—more money than the entire company made. And finally, Northwest Airlines paid $26.6 million in bonuses to Doug Steenland and U.S. Airways doled out $14.4 million to Doug Parker. It is indeed a good time to be a U.S. airline executive. But front-line workers who helped save these airlines deserve their share of the recovery, and that is simply not happening.
Clearly, the troubles faced by aviation workers and passengers are reaching crisis proportions. The AFL-CIO and its aviation unions will not allow carriers to further destroy the rights and jobs of aviation workers who are essential if airlines are to operate safely and efficiently and provide passengers with the best aviation system in the world. We call on Congress and the administration to provide careful oversight of U.S. airlines to ensure that staffing levels, outsourcing and poor labor-management relations do not impact safety or further erode customer service. We also call on Congress to examine the appropriateness of airlines enriching their CEOs and top management just five years after billions in taxpayer dollars were provided to this industry as a bailout after 9/11. And finally, the AFL-CIO renews its call for Congress to step in and address the staffing crisis at the FAA and ensure that collective bargaining disputes at the agency are settled in a fair and impartial manner.