As owners slash contracts
Airline workers need strategy of united action
By Milt Neidenberg
How much is too much? The airline owners have crossed that
threshold. Led by United Airlines, they are tearing up union
contracts.
These legal agreements have protected jobs, health care,
pensions and many other union rights and benefits. They have
been disappearing at UAL ever since the corporation sought a
Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2002.
From that day, there has been a conspiracy between UAL
Chairperson Glenn F. Tilton and those who have financed the
bank rupt corporation for the last two years: Citigroup and
J.P. Morgan Chase. The banks want their investments
collateralized by arbitrarily inflicting huge cuts on the UAL
unions, with the complete coop eration of the bankruptcy court.
UAL has demanded that the court terminate four union pension
funds amounting to $8.3 billion, plus permit further labor-cost
cuts of $725 million a year. This is on top of the $2.5 billion
annual givebacks that the UAL unions granted at the time of the
December 2002 bankruptcy. The retirees have already given up
their health benefits.
Association of Flight Attendants Pre sident Greg Davidovich,
speaking for the union's executive council, issued a statement
after hearing the disastrous demands proposed by Tilton. It
said in part: "United Airlines declared war on us in proposed
cuts in wages, benefits and work rules. ... [I]f management
stands by these stipulations they will destroy United Airlines.
We're not going to let this happen."
Exactly right. But the threat goes beyond the AFA and UAL.
Imagine what other airlines have in store for their unionized
work forces to enable them to compete with UAL and, most
important, with the non-union regional, low-labor-cost airlines
that dot the country.
The crisis in the airline industry has led to intense
competition. The critical issue is which will go belly up. Will
it be UAL and US Airways, both now in bankruptcy? Delta, which
is threatening bankruptcy? American, Continental or
Northwest?
All are in competition to force their hundreds of thousands
of workers to accept the lowest denominator in labor costs.
It's the WalMart strategy applied to the airline unions and
their members. But the airline industry is a unionized
industry--that's the bright side.
Will the worn-out strategy of divide and conquer work? It
will if the airline unions see the struggle as only about the
drastic cuts imposed by each particular company. The situation
cries out for a strategy of unity and action. It demands the
implementation of that historic union call: an injury to one is
an injury to all.
It demands that a difficult but necessary task be
undertaken, new to the airline unions, which have different
contracts and conditions with the various bosses. A call for a
summit conference of all the airline unions and their
rank-and-file leaders would be a first step. They could
announce a council of war to proclaim their common interest:
survival.
This would shake up airline management. Although the many
airline bosses, and the bankers and investors who sit on their
executive boards, are in competition amongst themselves, they
all agree that driving down labor costs is the best way to
go--and may the most demanding corporation win.
The basis for unity among the various airline unions must be
a plan of action to protect jobs, pensions, health benefits and
the sanctity of their contracts, won over years of sacrifice
and struggle. The airline workers did not create this crisis.
They kept the planes flying and the airlines in business. The
workers can operate the companies, if even for a short time, to
protect their equity and their jobs. The call for workers'
control is on the front burner. It will take bold action and a
united struggle to win.
Reprinted from the Nov. 18, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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