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Assault on Workers’ Wages, Benefits Spreads
By Warren L. Mart, General Secretary-Treasurer, International Association of Machinists
Like a pandemic of greed, the assault on U.S. workers’ wages, pensions and health care continues to spread — from the steel industry to airlines and aerospace companies and now to automakers and parts suppliers.
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The use of bankruptcy laws to slash wages and force changes to long standing labor contracts is just the latest tactic employed by corporations and allied lawmakers to reverse decades of social and economic progress for workers across North America.
Bankruptcy, which was once viewed as the ultimate badge of shame for a company’s managing executives, is increasingly seen as an acceptable avenue to large-scale corporate restructuring.
For employees as well as shareholders, the world appears turned upside down as senior executives are not only retained after bankruptcy, but are rewarded with lavish bonuses for their cost-cutting performances.
For airline workers, the flight path to financial disaster became apparent the moment carriers began selling airline tickets for far less than the cost of building, buying and maintaining large fleets of modern aircraft.
Any first year business student could predict the inevitable consequences of pricing a product below the cost of producing that product.
The growth of start-up carriers, the phenomena of online ticketing and the run up of fuel prices are but convenient scapegoats for the abysmal performance of our largest carriers.
With few exceptions, airlines either created their own worst problems or failed utterly to react in a timely manner to forces remaking air travel.
For unions representing airline workers, representation in the workplace now includes representation in bankruptcy courts, where judges routinely rule in favor of the corporation — at the expense of nearly everything and everyone else.
Preserving defined benefit pensions, as the IAM was able to do for its members at United Airlines and US Airways is nearly unheard of in large-scale bankruptcies. It is a testament to the perseverance of our members and representatives that they were able to prevail under such extraordinary circumstances.
Workers in the aerospace industry are facing similar pressure, but without corporations being able to use the fig leaf of bankruptcy as a cover.
At the Boeing Company, where profits and aircraft orders were approaching record levels, executives claimed they simply could no longer afford pension increases and health care for future retirees.
It took a 28-day strike by a determined IAM workforce before executives were forced to reexamine their deeply flawed and unnecessarily costly miscalculations.
At the heart of this war on workers is the unregulated free market policy that applauds the kind of ruthless corporate Darwinism that assures a non stop gladiator-like struggle for survival among companies, workers and even consumers.
So long as our sense of justice and fairness is trumped by the appeal of low prices and cheap airfare, we will continue to suffer the ill effects of this relentless race to the bottom.
