FACETIOUS SAYS

BRATS FOR ALL, BENEFITS FOR NONE

Today in my city we celebrated employee appreciation day. It was a wonderful event replete with myriads of different level managers attempting to cook burgers, brats and supply the associated required condiments. Most employees from all Departments congregated and indulged in the frenzied feeding feast.

One has to wonder what more we should or even could expect from such well adjusted leaders, after all, aren’t burgers and brats the standard fair from most management types?

Occasional cooking fests have supplanted the very need to organize and demand better pay, benefits, sick time, pension reform and medical insurance improvements. How can we possibly do better than a burger and a brat? Certainly any of you that have had the displeasure to visit the doctor lately have found out how limited your options are when it comes to securing adequate medical coverage. Hell, you might not get that pill you need but at least you can enjoy a nice juicy burger.

People have become so easily satisfied and fooled, offer them a promise of industry standard pay, (What ever that might really mean) and watch them toe the party line.

Mean while how many of you under 52 as of April of this year know that your already permanent frozen pension is about to shrink another 10% or more? Never mind that when your Social Security kicks in at 62, you stand to lose 50% of what you are entitled to from Social Security because Delta is going to impose a social security off-set against your frozen pensions. Don’t worry, Delta can’t take the money from your Social Security Check, so they simply reduce your already pathetic retirement check.

Those of you who are forced to buy the expensive Delta self-funded medical insurance, coupled with the Social Security off-set and the further 10% reduction in your retirement pension will end up with little more than nothing. It shouldn't concern you that no union represented carrier allows off-sets in their pension contracts. You have this honest management team, along with an occasional cook-out to take care of your needs.

It’s not much of a showing for 20 or 30 years of loyal service. It makes you wonder why we were so easily fooled by the false promises of those we so much trusted over the years, always having in the backs of our minds, that somehow we were accruing a formidable pension for future protection.

You know we’ve been had and only have ourselves to blame for not asking the tough questions during the old benefit “road shows”, but we now have an opportunity to get healthy through organization with IAM. They offer pensions, both frozen and not that don’t have social security off-sets, they have an additional National Pension Fund that has billions of dollars of accruable, growing assets, not controlled by the various Airlines; they have superior contracts with their Airlines that supply employees’ adequate sick leave and sufficient medical coverage.

Let’s get busy, get organized, get our union cards signed and begin to assert some authority and real power. Only then will employee appreciation day take on real meaning, and have the dignity commensurate with our productivity and work ethic.