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US Airways Agents Reject Unfair Demands
CWA passenger agents at US Airways members want management to meet them halfway as both sides bargain over the airline’s cost-cutting demands.
A survey of agents, conducted for CWA, found that nearly three-quarters of the agents are unwilling to accept the steep concession demands US Airways management is making.
The company is seeking to roll back top rate hourly wages from $22.05 to $17.88, which would return agents to the wage rates of the late 1980s. Management is demanding excessive cuts of more than $96,000 per agent through 2008. CWA has proposed salary and medical care cuts of $17,000 per agent at the top rate for the same period, an offer management dismissed as “not enough.”
Agents want US Airways to survive and “we want to play our part in keeping our airline operating. But we cannot participate at the same level as the more highly paid employee groups who have more generous benefit packages and who have not made the level of sacrifice our members already have made,” said Cathy Bumgarner, president of CWA Local 3640 and a member of the negotiating team.
Before passenger service agents gained CWA representation in 1999, they suffered the loss of their pension plan, elimination of post-Medicare health care and drug coverage and a 10-year wage freeze.
US Airways has reached agreements with the pilots and flight attendants, while CWA and the machinists are continuing negotiations.
CWA represents about 10,000 agents at US Airways with 2,700 now furloughed.
A survey of agents, conducted for CWA, found that nearly three-quarters of the agents are unwilling to accept the steep concession demands US Airways management is making.
The company is seeking to roll back top rate hourly wages from $22.05 to $17.88, which would return agents to the wage rates of the late 1980s. Management is demanding excessive cuts of more than $96,000 per agent through 2008. CWA has proposed salary and medical care cuts of $17,000 per agent at the top rate for the same period, an offer management dismissed as “not enough.”
Agents want US Airways to survive and “we want to play our part in keeping our airline operating. But we cannot participate at the same level as the more highly paid employee groups who have more generous benefit packages and who have not made the level of sacrifice our members already have made,” said Cathy Bumgarner, president of CWA Local 3640 and a member of the negotiating team.
Before passenger service agents gained CWA representation in 1999, they suffered the loss of their pension plan, elimination of post-Medicare health care and drug coverage and a 10-year wage freeze.
US Airways has reached agreements with the pilots and flight attendants, while CWA and the machinists are continuing negotiations.
CWA represents about 10,000 agents at US Airways with 2,700 now furloughed.