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CWA Proposes Buy-Out at US Airways
In another session with US Airways management, CWA local presidents and staff representing passenger service agents reminded executives of agents' tremendous financial sacrifices over the past decade and proposed a comprehensive plan to reduce costs without the drastic cuts management is demanding.
The plan includes an employee buy-out, changes in the funding of retiree medical costs and a voluntary work-at-home option, alternatives that will save millions, CWA said.
US Airways union workers have been meeting with management as part of the airline's restructuring. Union workers already have given up more than $1.2 billion in wage and benefit
concessions to help keep the airline in business.
Management now wants additional pay and benefit cuts of $122 million from passenger service, which amounts to a cut of $25,700 per year per full-time employee. A cut of this magnitude "would drive passenger service employees right out of the middle class and into a drastically lower standard of living," CWA said.
Management's description of a "seniority problem" in the passenger service unit is age discrimination and "a direct attack on the individual employees who work for this company, CWA charged.
In early presentations, management had included data on Southwest Airlines - the nation's most successful airline and a direct competitor in several US Airways markets - in its comparison of agent compensation. CWA's analysis shows that Southwest's cost per agent this year is nearly $6,000 higher than US Airways,' leading management to drop Southwest from its comparison. Now management is comparing US Airways agents with those at Jet Blue and America West, excluding all other airlines.
The local officers reminded management that agents took pay freezes and cuts in benefits in the early 1990s when no other group at US Airways did. Management "can't ask, again, for the lowest paid group to subsidize the others," CWA said.
The plan includes an employee buy-out, changes in the funding of retiree medical costs and a voluntary work-at-home option, alternatives that will save millions, CWA said.
US Airways union workers have been meeting with management as part of the airline's restructuring. Union workers already have given up more than $1.2 billion in wage and benefit
concessions to help keep the airline in business.
Management now wants additional pay and benefit cuts of $122 million from passenger service, which amounts to a cut of $25,700 per year per full-time employee. A cut of this magnitude "would drive passenger service employees right out of the middle class and into a drastically lower standard of living," CWA said.
Management's description of a "seniority problem" in the passenger service unit is age discrimination and "a direct attack on the individual employees who work for this company, CWA charged.
In early presentations, management had included data on Southwest Airlines - the nation's most successful airline and a direct competitor in several US Airways markets - in its comparison of agent compensation. CWA's analysis shows that Southwest's cost per agent this year is nearly $6,000 higher than US Airways,' leading management to drop Southwest from its comparison. Now management is comparing US Airways agents with those at Jet Blue and America West, excluding all other airlines.
The local officers reminded management that agents took pay freezes and cuts in benefits in the early 1990s when no other group at US Airways did. Management "can't ask, again, for the lowest paid group to subsidize the others," CWA said.