08/09/2006
US Airways' marketing ploy crashes
Tom Fontaine, Times Staff
US Airways Group Inc. recently launched an internal marketing campaign called "I
Make US
Fly" that tries to unify employees from the merged company's two former airlines
under a
set of new corporate philosophies.
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The response of many employees to "I Make US Fly," union leaders say, has been
"You
Make Me Sick."
The colorful campaign literature, which is being distributed to the airline's
35,000
employees, fashions the new US Airways as a worker-driven low-cost carrier with
a
"business casual" approach.
That approach meets somewhere in the middle of the two former airlines. The old
US
Airways, which had been based in the eastern United States, was a more formal
airline that
catered largely to business travelers, while America West, based in Tempe,
Ariz., was
geared more toward vacation travelers, said company spokesman Morgan Durrant.
"We'll cater to our important business and leisure customers, but not in an
overly formal
way. ... We're concentrating on what our customers want most, without a lot of
fluff," the
campaign literature says.
The literature includes customer-service flashcards for each of the airline's
employee
groups. The No. 1 rule for each of them, from reservation agents and ramp
workers to
corporate employees: "Being friendly and helpful ... all the time."
Union reps panned the campaign.
"It's birdcage material. It paints everything as a rosy picture, and it's not,"
Mike Flores,
spokesman for the US Airways flight attendants union, said of the literature.
The flight attendants are among a handful of union groups from the former US
Airways
and America West in the process of negotiating joint contracts with the airline.
After the new US Airways announced it posted a $305 million second-quarter
profit, union
leaders said they wanted their workers to be rewarded for sacrifices made in the
past,
including billions in concessions during the former US Airways' two
bankruptcies.
However, US Airways Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker has said he wants to
reach joint
contracts without increasing labor costs.
Further riling the rank-and-file, union leaders said, were recent announcements
that
Parker made roughly $9 million selling company stock last week and that
management
employees are in line to receive 3 percent pay increases this fall.
"If anyone thinks for one minute that whitewashing serious labor unrest with
cosmetics
will cover up deep-rooted problems, this airline is in serious trouble," said
Capt. Jack
Stephan, spokesman for the US Airways pilots group.
"The campaign is nice window-dressing, but if they want to increase morale, they
need to
do that at the bargaining table," added Capt. Tania Bziukiewicz, spokeswoman for
the
America West pilots group.
Coca-Cola, which beat out Pepsi to sell its products on the new US Airways'
flights, paid to
produce the literature and a related video. The cost could not be determined
Tuesday.
Tom Fontaine can be reached online at
tfontaine@....
©Beaver County Times Allegheny Times 2006
