FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
TO INDUSTRY STANDARD PAY

PAY BELOW INDUSTRY STANDARDS
PROFITS SOAR DESPITE OPERATIONAL PROBLEMS

For those of us who have been around for awhile, these airline times are hard to figure. A barrel of oil is at an all-time high, passenger and baggage miss-handling has never been greater. Delays all across the system are choking the skies. Passengers are beside themselves with anger and frustration.

And yet, we and many other airlines have just had the biggest 3rd quarter (revenue wise) in history. Go figure.

Somebody must be doing something right, wouldn’t you think? Or maybe it was something else that drove the numbers so high. Perhaps all it took for many airlines was the act of dumping a whopping load of debt onto the creditors through the bankruptcy courts. Oh, and slicing employee salaries and benefits to the bone. It really wasn’t magic and it didn’t take a lot of “thinking outside the box.” It was just good old-fashioned ruthlessness …and it worked, almost too quickly and effectively.

For those airline employees with union contracts, the sacrifices they made financially, in the form of pay-cuts and benefit reductions, were only temporary. Their unions are seeing to it that they share equally and quickly in the good times that are upon us.

What about us? Is it just me, or has the phrase “industry standard pay” completely disappeared? I haven’t heard those words since Jerry left. Perhaps with a new administration, these words are no longer in their lexicon.

Ed Bastian made these statements last March: “In the new Delta we will not make commitments to our people that we can’t fulfill. Our pay philosophy must be to pay our employees a fair wage for the great work that they do”….”we won’t be taking your money away from you either.” Jerry Grinstein added this: “What we have to aim for is being somewhat ahead of the industry standard in base pay. Therefore, you can expect pay increases over a period of time to bring you up to that point in the industry.”

We are now at or near the bottom of the industry in pay, when one compares us to the other legacy carriers, including Southwest. United and American are at the middle of the scale, a full 2 dollars an hour ahead of us. Now is the time to put us at industry standard (average) pay. If not now, when? Times will never be better.

There’s an old union adage: ** You may never get what you deserve, but you’ll always get what you negotiate for.**

Like in the land of Oz, we can all wait until Dorothy sees the wizard and life magically gets better. Or we can join the real world, grow up and make Delta sit down with us and negotiate. All it takes is enough of us signing a union card and getting an election and a contract. Let’s make it happen.