Not so good for AirTran - Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

[Propsync]

Like many have said, it's total crap. It's also prejudicial. I really can't believe Baghdad Carol is behind this, but I do. Every time something is negative to Midwest in the paper, there's always some kind of 'We're the best and we love to be the best care' crap that shows up a day later. And the people of this city eat it up. They don't think anything bad has ever happened here. The only reason so many people from here are against this merger is because Midwest told them to be against it. I honestly don't know whether to be more upset at Midwest or the village idiots.

I think the paper got involved because Midwest told them to. They always seem to have a full page ad every Sunday, maybe they put some financial pressure to get them to help sling some mud.

 

[On Your Six]

Just wait until Skybus (AKA Shame Train) invades Wisconsin... It's bound to happen and Midwest's management will come back crying to the negotiating table... Just you wait...

 

[ultrarunner]

If Dan looks hard enough, he will find instances of similar alleged abuses/allegations/charges at his "home-town" airline.

 

[spitfire1500]

This happen in 2003 and its now getting filed

Hey Lightning....why dont you get off that BRJ and come on over to the dark side of the Freight Deviates!!

 

[RIDETHELIGHTING]

Naah, my plane is big enough, you trying to make up for some short coming?:beer:
Also I like my weekends off.

give me a call

 

[mnboyev]

Pretty sad....not indicative of the rest of our airline....and we don't take our clothes off in the cockpit either....oh...that was SWA..
I'm quite sure MidEx has had its little internal problems on occasion.....Lets dig up some dirt and sling some doo doo !!

Let the games begin !!

 

[Wesb737fo]

I'm so upset I think I will have some coke and drive down the wrong lane on the freeway.

Give me a break. Dirt flinging from a Milwaukee reporter. Is that all you can come up with. Ok I'm going to file this under " Things I could give less than a sh!t about ". Sexual harassment in the work place is unnacceptable, but trying to tie this into some company wide problem and a reason for shareholders not to tender is stupid. Please just go away and stop wasting everyone's time by posting this stuff.

Where is Dr. Perry Cox when you need him?

 

[fam62c]

Wow. what a great example of balanced and unbiased reporting by the Milwaukee JS......not! If I'm not mistaken Midwest was the subject of some racial discrimination suits a few years ago that got settled out of court. The article didn't mention this but I'll bet I wouldn't need to spend very long on Google to find reference to this. Keep in mind that these are charges only, maybe they are true maybe they are not. Remember the Duke lacrosse team scandal recently? It looks to me like a some "victims" looking for a little hush money from AirTran. The Milwaukee paper has lost credibility with this one; there's a big difference between neutral, balanced reporting and a smear campaign to "demonize" Airtran. In the end this doesn't mean anything........the buyout is about MONEY and the shareholders will side with whoever will get them the most of it.

 

[Flydaplane]

This thing made the front page! Slow news day or a slanted editorial board?

 

[FlyWolf]

Here we go again, another one:

AirTran not exactly a newbie to lawsuits

Posted: May 2, 2007

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]Daniel Bice[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]No Quarter[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]E-MAIL [/FONT]


AirTran Airways is soaring in uncharted territory.

That was the original defense put up by the discount carrier when it first discussed five federal lawsuits charging that the airline had permitted widespread sexual and racial discrimination and sexual harassment at its small Milwaukee station. AirTran has come under increased scrutiny of late because it is attempting to buy out Midwest Airlines here in Milwaukee.
Yes, AirTran acknowledged, ex-employees have gone to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the past to air their gripes about the company. But until now, none of those had landed in federal court.
Let's hear company spokesman Tad Hutcheson put this in his own words:

"We've averaged fewer than 20 EEO complaints per year since 2000. This is the first (complaint) that has gone to a lawsuit where it's actually going to court since 2000."

So, to reiterate, AirTran doesn't get many of these suits, huh?
"No. This is our first one to go to court. We're breaking new ground here."
Or not.

It didn't take long for readers to start calling and e-mailing to set the record straight.

Actually, as many as a dozen former AirTran employees have sued the company in the past seven years, accusing it of discriminating against them because of their race, disability or national origin. This is not unusual at all, particularly for a company with 8,000 employees.
But one of the racial discrimination suits stands out.

In 2002, a former AirTran supervisor, Rose Bozeman, filed suit against the carrier based in Orlando, Fla., saying the manager of the Newark, N.J., station canned her because she was Latino.

No, Bozeman didn't win the case. The judge found that she didn't refute AirTran's claim that she was dumped because she failed to deposit $12 in liquor receipts as quickly as required under company policy.

What's interesting, though, is that the manager accused of racial discrimination, Terese Sellers, is the same person named in several of the Milwaukee suits as ignoring complaints and then retaliating against the employees. Wisconsin's Equal Rights Division found probable cause in the cases of two of the former AirTran workers that the company had discriminated against the women, permitted sexual harassment to occur and retaliated against the two after they raised objections. The three other women filed their cases in federal court before the state issued any preliminary ruling on their allegations.
AirTran has denied the charges.

Sellers did not return calls. She transferred to the Milwaukee office several months after Bozeman filed her EEOC complaint.

Did AirTran officials intentionally forget to mention this case when bragging about their clean record on employee discrimination suits?
Not at all, the airlines' corporate types say.

Hutcheson, the AirTran spokesman, said Wednesday that he simply meant to say that the Milwaukee cases were the first involving sexual harassment to be filed against the company in federal court in recent years.

As for Sellers, he said, she was not transferred to Milwaukee because of the allegations swirling in Newark. Rather, the carrier opened its Milwaukee station in June 2002, and because she had family in the area, Sellers applied for the top post here, Hutcheson said. The move, he said, was a lateral one: "She jumped at the chance."
Lucky us.

For the record, AirTran general counsel Richard Magurno said the company is not the legal neophyte it was made out to be last week. The image he presents is that of a tough, aggressive litigant.
With the new facts comes a new defense.

Accounting for all cases in which employees claimed they were discriminated against because of their race, sex, national origin, religion or age, Magurno said AirTran has been sued in federal court between eight and 12 times - not the zero figure from last week - since 2000, when he came on board. He agreed that there have been no previous sexual harassment lawsuits.
In his time with AirTran, he boasted, the carrier has won all of its employee discrimination suits.

"We've not settled any of them," Magurno said. "Any case that finds its way into court, in our mind, is a case in which we are completely and totally defensible."

And AirTran has no plans to settle or lose the five Milwaukee cases.
"I have every confidence that our (unbeaten) record is not going to change."
Just the kind of tough talk you would have expected in the beginning from an airline attempting a hostile takeover.
Daniel Bice can be contacted by phone at (414) 223-5468 or by e-mail at [email protected].