Pilots Carry Out "Practice" Strikes At ATL, Other Airports
It was, frankly, a
demonstration of outrage in Atlanta Thursday, as some 275 Delta
pilots marched through the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport
terminal to protest the company's attempts to have their contracts
run through the shredder.
"You can consider today's actions an exercise and you can stand
by for the real thing," Lee Moak, chairman of the pilot union's
executive committee, said as he led the line of uniformed pilots
through the airport.
After stating last week that
they would turn up the volume on their protests by staging
practice strikes at airports around the
country, Delta's pilots did exactly that
this week -- in spite of a warning from the mediation committee
overseeing contract talks to tone it down.
The panel, led by chairman Richard Bloch, conducted negotiations
that ended in Washington last week without any resolution to the
company's demand for more pay and benefit concessions from its
six-thousand pilots.
As Aero-News reported, if the
panel has to actually decide on whether to allow Delta to toss out
its existing contracts in order to save an estimated $365 million
annually... it would likely mean disaster for both Delta and the
people who fly its planes.
Delta hasn't commented very much on that ultimatum... or, on the
"striking" pilots. "We won't comment on the status of negotiations
in any way," Delta spokesman Bruce Hicks told the Associated
Press.
For now, this was only
a "practice" strike. But pilots warn if the company tries to exact
those concessions without a mutual agreement... they'll hit the
picket lines for real.
"We would be happy to turn down the noise if the senior
executives turned down the noise and removed the 1113 motion," Moak
said. The 1113 motion is the case number of Delta's motion to
reject the union contract.
Matsen Exits
Delta is making good on some of its pledges to cut back
expenses, however... by cutting approximately 1,000
management-level jobs with the company. The latest to be shown the
door is marketing director Paul Matsen, who until Thursday had been
with Delta for 12 years.
Matsen came up with Delta's reasonably successful Simplifares
program, as well as the arguably less effective (and certainly less
prescient) "Good goes around" advertising campaign that the
bankrupt airline has been using for the past year.
Delta told the
AP it will be dropping "good goes around" in the near future
(in fact, already the logo is nowhere to be found on the airline's
website.)
Chief Executive Gerald Grinstein announced Matsen's departure in
a message to employees Thursday, adding that the marketing position
would not be filled immediately.
Other management changes are expected to be announced next
month... although top officials like Grinstein, CFO Ed Bastian and
COO James Whitehurst aren't expected to have to start looking for
new jobs any time soon. In fact, Whitehurst now has an additional
title... marketing director.