Borescope said:
Give those boys a raise. Northwest has money to burn
They only showed a 225M loss.
[post="284072"][/post]
MORE MONEY TO BURN
Flight Attendant Recruiting
Recently NWA placed national advertisements seeking: "Individuals who successfully complete Flight Attendant training may be offered employment in the event of a labor dispute or strike."
This "contingency plan" has been used before at NWA during contract negotiations. In 1988 a 21-day "accelerated" training program was implemented. A more modest version of this plan was implemented in 1999/2000. Given its historic re-occurrence during contract negotiations, we should not be surprised or threatened by the details of this plan.
This type of training comes at a tremendous cost to the company at a time when NWA claims it is desperate to cut costs and needs employee concessions to survive. These costs must be included in the corporation's business plan. We have discovered:
120 people will be hired off-the-street to conduct the Flight Attendant training.
Trainees will be paid $60 per day during training.
Once trainees have successfully completed training, they will be paid $500 per month to sit around and wait.
If/when they are hired, they have been promised to be paid between $3000 and $7000 signing bonus, depending on how long they sit waiting.
It is estimated that approximately 1200 people will complete training.
We estimated a few of the calculated costs to NWA:
$60 daily trainee payment x 21 day estimated training period x 1200 trainees = $1,512,000
$500 "sit around pay" x 1200 trainees = $600,000 every month they "sit around"
Signing bonuses will total between $3,600,000 to $8,400,000 (A $3000 signing bonus x 1200 trainees = $3,600,000. A $7000 signing bonus x 1200 trainees = $8,400,000)
Housing cost for the trainees will include hotel accommodations. The average bulk rate in the Twin Cities is approximately $60 per night based upon double occupancy. 1200 divided by 2 = 600 rooms needed each training night. 600 rooms x 20 nights x $60 = $720,000
Some of the costs of the "contingency plan" we are currently unable to estimate. They include:
Salary for the 120 off-the-street instructors
Meeting rooms rental to conduct the training
Training material cost
Recruitment advertising in newspapers and on the internet
Interview process