After 9/11 many American Airlines workers took a 35% pay cut to help salvage the nose-diving company. In exchange, workers were promised better health, retirement and flying benefits, but these promises have not been kept.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/hamill-american-airlines-workers-pay-cut-9-11-lose-privileges-article-1.1812900#ixzz33Y7pUbwP
They helped save the airline that they will picket on Wednesday.
Flight attendant Mary McKenna and her American Airlines co-workers took a 35% pay cut after 9/11 to help salvage the nose-diving company.
“For months after 9/11, when Al Qaeda terrorists flew American Airline jets into one of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, our flights were empty,” says McKenna, who retired in 2010 after 33 years of flying American. “I lost good friends that day. Passengers knew we were targeted because we were called American. So they wouldn’t book seats for a long time afterward.”
So McKenna, who never made more than $35,000 a year in base salary, accepted the pay cut to save jobs and American Airlines in exchange for corporate promises that health, retirement and cost-negative free-flying benefits would be sweetened.
McKenna is also a licensed psychotherapist with a master’s degree from St. John’s University who helped counsel many of her traumatized co-workers as the airline tried to reclaim the scary skies after 9/11.
“The most crucial thing we had to do was talk about what was troubling us,” McKenna (pictured below) told me in 2006. “I’d had a hard time because I knew people who died on 9/11 and Flight 587 that went down a month later in Rockaway.”
She says everyone she knew at American Airlines made sacrifices because they believed it was the right thing to do for the country and their company.
“I love American Airlines,” McKenna said last week. “It gave me a life. I kept flying after 9/11 even though we didn’t get any pay raises for years. In 2010 I broke a hip and hurt my back in terrible turbulence and was forced to retire. Thank God I did or I would have lost a lot of my benefits after American Airlines declared bankruptcy anyway in November 2011.”
In bankruptcy court American Airlines tried to renege on all the corporate promises made to the workers who took the 35% pay cut to save the company after the country and the company was attacked by foreign terrorists.
Awful.
“First, we had to start paying our own medical,” says McKenna. “But
then they asked the court to cut our retirement packages. Judge Sean
Lane has been pretty fair. He made AA honor the retirement packages for
union members who are already retired. But on Thursday he ruled that all
non-union workers, about 40,000 ticket agents and ground crew, would
lose all their medical and retirement."
The people who had been loyal to a sick airline were now leaving the same people without bennies in retirement.
“And people like me who took a pay cut when I was younger so I could fly free to enjoy my retirement are losing our flying privileges,” she says. “Retirees can only fly after all active company employees and their families of a merged American and US Airways get the available seats. And after executives and their families fly free in first class for life. So someone hired by American last week gets ahead of someone like me with 33 years of service, especially at a time when we made the sacrifices to save this airline.”
This redefines the mile-high club.
McKenna says that she would have to wait standby in the airport for three days to get a free flight now.
“Our flying passes that we gave up salaries to get have been rendered worthless,” she says. “This is the payback for saving American Airlines after 9/11.”
Airline officials say they’ve been as fair as possible.
“We put a lot of thought into combining the travel privileges from American Airlines and US Airways, knowing that we had many different groups to consider and would need to make some changes for everyone,” said Matt Miller, an American Airlines spokesman. “We did our best to take elements from both programs so everyone would continue to have some of the same privileges they have enjoyed previously.”
Miller said retirees will still “be able to enjoy vacation passes, buddy passes and no-fee travel for their eligible dependents.”
McKenna says that Doug Parker, the new American Airlines CEO, who made $13.4 million selling US Airways shares after the merger and who still owns about $40 million in stock, will be at the American Airlines shareholders meeting on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. outside 885 Third Ave.
Her colleague Greg Liebman will be on hand to present Parker with 40,000 signatures collected from the Retired Employees of American Airlines.
“The success, indeed the very possibility, of the merger of US Airways and American Airlines came about only because of the support you received from the legacy of American Airline employees,” Liebman writes in a cover letter to Parker. “Those employees deserve the respect and support you promised, and honoring the service of present and future retirees is a good place for you to start.”
“We were important to American after 9/11 when they needed us,” says McKenna. “Today we are discarded. How soon they forget. We won’t.”
dhamill@nydailynews.com
Flight attendant Mary McKenna and her American Airlines co-workers took a 35% pay cut after 9/11 to help salvage the nose-diving company.
“For months after 9/11, when Al Qaeda terrorists flew American Airline jets into one of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, our flights were empty,” says McKenna, who retired in 2010 after 33 years of flying American. “I lost good friends that day. Passengers knew we were targeted because we were called American. So they wouldn’t book seats for a long time afterward.”
So McKenna, who never made more than $35,000 a year in base salary, accepted the pay cut to save jobs and American Airlines in exchange for corporate promises that health, retirement and cost-negative free-flying benefits would be sweetened.
McKenna is also a licensed psychotherapist with a master’s degree from St. John’s University who helped counsel many of her traumatized co-workers as the airline tried to reclaim the scary skies after 9/11.
“The most crucial thing we had to do was talk about what was troubling us,” McKenna (pictured below) told me in 2006. “I’d had a hard time because I knew people who died on 9/11 and Flight 587 that went down a month later in Rockaway.”
She says everyone she knew at American Airlines made sacrifices because they believed it was the right thing to do for the country and their company.
“I love American Airlines,” McKenna said last week. “It gave me a life. I kept flying after 9/11 even though we didn’t get any pay raises for years. In 2010 I broke a hip and hurt my back in terrible turbulence and was forced to retire. Thank God I did or I would have lost a lot of my benefits after American Airlines declared bankruptcy anyway in November 2011.”
In bankruptcy court American Airlines tried to renege on all the corporate promises made to the workers who took the 35% pay cut to save the company after the country and the company was attacked by foreign terrorists.
Awful.
On Thursday he ruled that all non-union workers, about 40,000 ticket agents and ground crew, would lose all their medical and retirement.
The people who had been loyal to a sick airline were now leaving the same people without bennies in retirement.
“And people like me who took a pay cut when I was younger so I could fly free to enjoy my retirement are losing our flying privileges,” she says. “Retirees can only fly after all active company employees and their families of a merged American and US Airways get the available seats. And after executives and their families fly free in first class for life. So someone hired by American last week gets ahead of someone like me with 33 years of service, especially at a time when we made the sacrifices to save this airline.”
This redefines the mile-high club.
McKenna says that she would have to wait standby in the airport for three days to get a free flight now.
“Our flying passes that we gave up salaries to get have been rendered worthless,” she says. “This is the payback for saving American Airlines after 9/11.”
Airline officials say they’ve been as fair as possible.
“We put a lot of thought into combining the travel privileges from American Airlines and US Airways, knowing that we had many different groups to consider and would need to make some changes for everyone,” said Matt Miller, an American Airlines spokesman. “We did our best to take elements from both programs so everyone would continue to have some of the same privileges they have enjoyed previously.”
Miller said retirees will still “be able to enjoy vacation passes, buddy passes and no-fee travel for their eligible dependents.”
McKenna says that Doug Parker, the new American Airlines CEO, who made $13.4 million selling US Airways shares after the merger and who still owns about $40 million in stock, will be at the American Airlines shareholders meeting on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. outside 885 Third Ave.
Her colleague Greg Liebman will be on hand to present Parker with 40,000 signatures collected from the Retired Employees of American Airlines.
“The success, indeed the very possibility, of the merger of US Airways and American Airlines came about only because of the support you received from the legacy of American Airline employees,” Liebman writes in a cover letter to Parker. “Those employees deserve the respect and support you promised, and honoring the service of present and future retirees is a good place for you to start.”
“We were important to American after 9/11 when they needed us,” says McKenna. “Today we are discarded. How soon they forget. We won’t.”
dhamill@nydailynews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment