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News :: Labor |
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Labor Headlines 4/19/03 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
(No verified email address) |
19 Apr 2003
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Headlines broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 am on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. American Airlines Execs take $1.8 billion in worker concessions & 100% pay increase for themselves; Mass layoffs reporting reinstated, UI Attempts to Force Furlough on Employees; WTO Ministerial Approaches -- Resistance builds |
American Airlines Execs take $1.8 billion in worker concessions & 100% pay increase for themselves
The greed of American corporate executives is simply stunning. Those even vaguely familiar with US airline industry know that since September 2001 the mantra that leaders have been repeating is this: The industry is in crisis. Their performance has been so convincing that the federal government gave the airlines more than $20 billion in grants and loan guarantees, some of which may be illegal under rules of the World Trade Organization. American Airlines has been a prime example. Executives coerced the airline's unions into giving up $1.8 billion in concessions including thousands of job cuts. Under the threat of bankruptcy, pilots took a 23 percent pay cut and elimination of 2000 jobs. Mechanics and baggage handlers gave up $620 million including the loss of post-retirement health insurance. And flight attendants, in a suspiciously extended vote, gave up $340 million in pay and benefits just last week. Then came American Airlines' filing with the Security and Exchange Commission. As reported in today's newspapers, it was disclosed that American Airlines offered stupendous bonuses to 45 top executives who agreed to stay with the airline until 2005. The bonuses included a special executive retirement plan, protected in case the airline went bankrupt; and salary bonuses that would double the executives' earnings. None of this was disclosed until after the last union accepted their pay, benefit, and job cuts. Outcry from the unions and from the federal government was fierce, and by Saturday, the salary bonuses were retracted, but the special pension remains in place. American Airlines CEO Don Carty apologized for the "concern" the bonuses "caused [the] employees," and claimed that he did not intend to mislead anyone. James Oberstar, the ranking Democrat on the House transportation committee criticized American's dishonesty. Central Illinois republican congressman Tim Johnson also serves on the transportation committee. The pilots' union issued a statement criticizing the bonuses, and this morning, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants announced that they changed their mind about their contract concessions. They will re-vote. The mechanics and baggage handlers, members of the United Transportation Union, haven't signed off on their concessions, and they may retract their agreement, as well.
http://www.alliedpilots.org/Public/PublicRelations/PressReleases/20030417.asp
http://www.apfa.org/
http://www.utu.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-airlines-american.html
Mass layoffs reporting reinstated
"Funding for the BLS Mass Layoff Statistics program has been restored and the publication of news releases on mass layoffs has resumed." -April 9 The reporting of mass layoffs was stopped on December 12 when the Bush administration cut funding to the program. The white house offered no explanation of why the program's funding was cancelled, but reports showed that the number of mass layoffs increased by 50% during Bush's first year in office, and the total number of people laid off during that year increased by 36%. When the reports resumed on April 9, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that in January-February 2003, employers initiated 3,600 layoffs of 50 or more people, for a total of 340,500 workers pushed out of work.
UI Attempts to Force Furlough on Employees
Last year when the State of Illinois was going through its first round of budget reductions, Governor George Ryan attempted to force state employees to take unpaid days off, of furlough days. This year, administrators at the University of Illinois appear to be attempting to do the same thing to university employees. U of I employees were informed earlier this week that the university intended to change the way it performs payroll functions, consolidating operations on all three campuses. The result, they said, was that some paychecks would arrive a little late in September, and the checks would be smaller than normal. A closer look by university employees revealed that they were actually going to be taking a 5-day unpaid leave, and they're not happy about it. On Thursday, the professor's union and the Association of Academic Professionals issued a statement protesting the change. The two groups represent some of the four thousand staff at the Urbana campus who are exempt from civil service protections and are thus vulnerable to such edicts from university managers, and leaders of the groups hope to meet with campus managers. Human resources manager Kathleen Pecknold claims that the university will not save money from employees by making the change.
http://www.news-gazette.com/story.cfm?Number=13635
WTO Ministerial Approaches -- Resistance builds
The next top-level meeting of the World Trade Organization will take place September 10-14 in Cancun, Mexico. As the meeting approaches, resistance from non-governmental and governmental organizations is building.
The Associated Press reported on March 29 that local and state governments are alarmed by "liberalization" proposed by corporate America. Removal of trade barriers in service industries such as banking and telecommunications could run into major opposition from an state and city governments. Local officials are starting to raise concerns that the Bush administration will negotiate away their flexibility to regulate a wide swath of service providers from banks and lawyers to the local water and sewer companies. Those worries have been fueled by a massive 400-page document that the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick mailed out to state government officials in January providing them with a summary of the requests various countries were making of the United States in the trade liberalization negotiations. The various requests seek to remove a number of special restrictions that now apply to foreigners in such areas as the ownership of banks, insurance companies and various utilities including telephone companies and firms supplying water and sewer services. Some state officials, alarmed at what they saw in the summary document, wrote this week to Zoellick, requesting greater consultation going forward. State Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison, Wis., was one of six members of the Wisconsin legislature to write Zoellick this week seeking greater consultation between U.S. negotiators and state officials. He said, "The negotiations are delving into dozens of areas that are the charge of state and local governments, like water, energy, insurance, professional services, alcohol distribution and more, yet state and local officials are not being consulted."
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/news/index.cfm?ID=4241
On March 21, forty non-governmental organizations from different continents announced a campaign focused on stopping the launch of WTO negotiations on a multilateral investment agreement, which they consider harmful for developing countries. NGO's from at least five continents participated in the announcement. In the press conference announcing the campaign, the NGOs warned that the agreement being pushed by the U.S., the European Union (EU) and Japan will create a corporate bill of rights that will fundamentally favor multinational corporations while at the same time eviscerating the ability of governments to regulate foreign investment. Salvadoran Raul Moreno of the Hemispheric Social Alliance of the Americas predicted that an agreement such as the one proposed would have a negative impact from a economic, social and environmental viewpoint, as this is already happening in Mexico, said Moreno, as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA agreement has already produced more than twenty court cases between the U.S., Canada and Mexico and the [NAFTA] tribunals have forced governments to pay millions of dollars in compensation to multinational corporations for having ordered, for example, the closing of a toxic waste plant, as happened in San Luis Potosí (Mexico), Moreno said. Another case mentioned by Moreno for its significance is that of the U.S. corporation Bechtel which sued the Bolivian government for US$25 million, alleging that it never got profits promised when it took control of the administration of water services in Cochabamba because it was forced to abandon operations there after popular protests against water price hikes. Bechtel is suing the Bolivian government in the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an agency of the World Bank, after having established an address in Holland in order to use an investment treaty between that country and Bolivia given the lack of a simliar agreement [allowing private enforcement of investor rights] between Bolivia and the U.S.
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/news/index.cfm?ID=4222
http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min03_e/min03_e.htm |
