------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Sept. 12, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
WORKERS MUSH FIGHT FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS: CONCESSIONS WON'T STOP AIRLINE BANKRUPTCIES By Michelle Quintus Local Council 5 Representative Association of Flight Attendants New York City It seems not a day goes by without some mention in the media about trouble in the airline industry. President George W. Bush's attempts to prohibit airport security workers from organizing into unions, the rise in airline CEO salaries while they claim loss of profits, the mergers that neglect worker contracts, worker layoffs and bankruptcies--all have become regular topics. However, almost every bit of "news" regarding the airlines rests on a myth: that labor is the cause of ongoing financial struggles in the airlines--and that the workers had better accept pay cuts and concessions or the airline companies will be driven into bankruptcy. Many airline workers at Pan Am, Continental, Eastern and TWA survived bankruptcies. They know the truth: Worker concessions never saved an airline. CONCESSIONS FROM WORKERS, BONUSES FOR TOP MANAGEMENT USAirways workers learned this recently when they accepted concessions in pay and work rules, supposedly to save the company from bankruptcy. The airline had requested $950 million per year total in cost savings from all its work groups. Still, USAirways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just days after reaching concessionary agreements with its workers. One week after USAirways' bankruptcy, the company asked the courts to release $6 million for bonuses for approximately 500 senior management employees. The reality in the airlines mirrors the reality in other U.S. corporations like Enron and WorldCom: The corporate owners are stealing more and more from workers' wages and retirement funds. Many airlines are doing this in the name of the Sept. 11 tragedy. But most of the airline financial struggles began long before that. United Airlines, for example, hasn't turned a profit in two years. Management's solution is to point a finger at the workers who keep the airline in the air. These same workers actually own 55 percent of the company through Employee Stock Option Plans, but they are denied basic decision- making power over the airline's direction. Worker-owners are also denied the profits generated by their own labor. GOV'T ABETS AIRLINE BOSSES The U.S. government is also playing a role in the anti-labor rhetoric. The Bush administration established the Airline Transportation Stabilization Board in September 2001 in the name of bringing airline corporations financial relief through government subsidies and loans. This so-called stabilization board has given handouts to airline corporations--$807 million each to United and American Airlines--without including any relief for airline workers. Now it has gone a step further by requiring worker concessions at airlines seeking loans through the ATSB. These demands for labor concessions convey the message that labor costs are the airlines' primary problem. In rebuttal, the Flight Attendants union at United Airlines points out that an arbitrator recently ruled that United enjoyed a $48-million advantage in its flight attendant costs over the average of its competitors in 2001. "The math doesn't add up," explained Greg Davidowitch, president of the Flight Attendants at United Airlines, "when management asks for exorbitant concessions from workers-- totaling $9 billion over six years--to obtain a $1.8-billion loan guarantee from the Air Transportation Stabilization Board. We ask: Is United using the ATSB as its heavy to extract huge concessions from its workers to cover for years of mismanagement? Or is the White House attempting to dictate what airline workers in this country earn through the ATSB?" United Airlines was recently denied an ATSB loan until it gets worker concessions. The bosses then presented labor groups with a "cost recovery plan"-- and announced publicly that they might file Chapter 11 bankruptcy by November 2002. The corporation offers no management contribution to this plan, nor any guarantee to workers that these concessions would avoid a bankruptcy filing. In fact, UAL has hired Jack Gallagher, attorney for Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker--a known union buster from the days of Frank Lorenzo at Eastern Airlines--to assist it during this process. But union solidarity is strong at the airline. Leaders of all unions at United Airlines have greed to participate in a coordinated labor response to the financial dilemma. They are meeting on Sept. 4 to discuss plans. Ramie Miller, a United flight attendant who formerly worked at Continental Airlines and who went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy at that company, says: "I'm not afraid of bankruptcy. Truth is, I can't live on anything less; there is no room for us to give anything back. "Continental used to ask us not to collect our welfare checks in our uniform because it was an embarrassment to the company. And cutting wages here [at UAL] puts us right back in that position." WORKERS ARE PRINCIPAL CREDITORS Bankruptcy may not be the end of the road for airline workers. In the book "High Tech, Low Pay," Sam Marcy suggests that bankruptcy may be the ideal time for workers to assert their right as the principal creditors. After all, workers routinely advance credit to the company by advancing labor power for a period of time prior to getting paid. "The unions," Marcy explained, "can insist on the right to become the trustee in bankruptcy and to operate ... in the interests of the workers. When a company files for bankruptcy, it is no longer the legal owner; it surrenders its title. The union(s) as the principal creditor of the company are, therefore, the de facto owner on behalf of the workers." Karl Marx also showed that the worker's status as a creditor is not a fiction, but reality. To be sure, the other creditors of airline companies, including the banks, will not surrender their claim to trusteeship without a struggle. But the right to a job is a property right, accompanied by the right to seize and occupy that property. Airline workers need not remain victims to the mismanagement and corporate exploitation that drives the industry into bankruptcy and workers into concessions or unemployment. Worker rights must be asserted in mass action and solidarity with each other. In this way, labor is not the cause of airline financial difficulties, but may, in fact, become the answer. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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