"Hi, welcome to Delta Air Lines... Oh, it's you. Didn't you used to work here?"
In an all too familiar move, Delta Airlines will ask the bankruptcy court in New York to terminate it's pilots' pension plan. They claim the move is necessary to emerge from it's nine month old bankruptcy reorganization. They claim funding the pension plan would cost them $1 billion in the near future. They say they still hope to save pension plans for other active employees and are planning for a new long distance, luxury flight service.
Do you know what's really cool about all of that? I didn't know I could pack that much bullshit into one paragraph.
There are so many things WRONG with this story. It makes as much sense as a Tom Cruise interview.
First off, they are trying to balance their books on the backs of the people they no longer need. They obviously feel no sense of moral obligation to these people. And if their word means nothing, then why should their current employees or the bankruptcy courts believe anything else they say?
They made contractual and ethical promises to the pilots when they needed them. And if the pilots' pensions were part of a negotiated compensation package, this move is nothing more than a unilateral, retroactive pay cut. And the courts are going along with it.
Delta is crying that if they keep paying the pilots' pensions, it will cost them another $1 billion soon. HOW? If they had a legally operated, properly managed pension plan (as mandated by law), the money should be there for the retired pilots and untouchable by anybody for any other purpose. Every week, the employee contributes his share, the company contributes their share, the fund grows in interest and is available when needed. That money was not there to buy gas and tires for the planes.
Instead of being in court asking to screw their faithful employees, Delta should be there answering to mismanagement of pension funds and fraud. If they are so incompetent that they can't manage a pension fund why should they be given another chance to run an airline?
Now they are telling everyone, "Trust us. We know we did a really, really, really bad job in the past, but we were young and immature. We've learned from our mistakes and promise not to do it again."
Then, just because the rest of us are so incredibly stupid, we are supposed to be distracted by their shiny new long-distance, luxury flights. I'd say the courts should be up in the air on this one. If Delta cannot meet their obligations to their past employees, they should just go away. Sell what's left of their half-assed company and at least try to meet their obligations.
No more peanuts, my ass!
1 comment:
Delta is no different than a lot of other compannies or industry groups. Look at the US steel industry and how they managed to price themselves out of the market by agreeing to labor contracts without taking into account the long term consequences and at the same time making sure that management was kept fat. Delta should have learned their lessons a long time ago from the failures of Braniff, Eastern, PanAm, TWA, etc. Labor too should have realized that what they were getting was not something that was realistic and could not last. There are few innocents in this debacle.
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