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NWA officials seek to keep bonuses in bankruptcy filing
Northwest Airlines is asking the bankruptcy court to approve millions of dollars in bonuses to a handful of executives.
This request comes as the airline is laying off workers and asking the rest for deep pay cuts.
"It's ridiculous," says Peter Fiske, an executive board member at large with the Professional Flight Attendants Union.
The airline wants executives to be allowed to retain their incentive plans, which are worth $20 million.
According to papers filed in bankruptcy court, Northwest says continuation of the incentive plans is "critical to Northwest's ability to remain a competitive employer and to avoid a potential loss of employees."
"It's absolutely absurd," Fiske said.
His union is supposed to re-enter contract talks next week with Northwest, and the airline is asking flight attendants for an additional $195 million in concessions.
A Northwest spokesman said the executive incentives are "previously existing obligations" that managers have come to expect, and taking them away means some managers might quit their jobs.
The spokesman, Kurt Ebenhoch, also says that salaried employees and managers took pay cuts before anyone else at the airline.
In December 2004, he said those cuts were worth $35 million. For the top five executives, that amounted to a 20 percent pay cut, Ebenhoch said.
He also said executive pensions were converted to 401(K)'s.
But on the picket lines, where union mechanics have been walking for a month, they said it adds insult to injury to know executives want to keep those $20 million incentives.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," said Kelly O'Brien, a striking AMFA mechanic. "They keep adding to their pockets and taking away from everybody else's, and I guess nobody seems to care but us.
As for the flight attendants, Peter Fiske says the airline is asking for $195 million in concessions - in addition to 1,400 layoffs that were announced last week.
He says he'll be negotiating with part of the same management team that's responsible for driving the airline into Chapter 11.
"It was not the employees that forced this airline to file bankruptcy," he said. "It was the management. The employees have never been the problem."
Northwest has said it wants to reduce its labor costs by $1.4 billion.
Monday, the airline said, once Northwest has reached agreements with its other unions, management and pilots will take another wage cut to contribute to that $1.4 billion goal.
By
Scott Goldberg, KARE 11 News
(Copyright 2005 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
