Lakefield urges union leaders to get deals done quickly
Dateline: Tuesday - July 20, 2004
NEW YORK (ATWOnline.com) - Fearing that US Airways' financial partners might soon "run out of patience," CEO Bruce Lakefield last week told employees that the airline's labor leaders and negotiators must get to the negotiating table and do so quickly.
"We have talked about the need for change for so long I know we are all sick of hearing about it," Lakefield said in a message to staff. "So let's get to the table, cut the deals and get to the other side…before the other legacy carriers do, so that we can get to the business of making money."
The airline has said it needs to shed a further $1.5 billion in expenses in order to compete in today's low-fare environment. Of that total, $800 million would come from labor. US Airways' pilots are reviewing a cost-cutting proposal and last week its flight attendants and the union representing its reservation agents, ticket counter workers and gate agents agreed to begin talks with management (ATWOnline, July 16). This leaves the International Assn. of Machinists as the only major union that has not agreed to begin negotiations with management.
"For those labor groups that haven't yet started talking to us, we need your labor leaders to get to the table and stay there until we get deals," Lakefield said. "This isn't a typical labor negotiation where we can spend months passing pieces of paper back and forth or worse, tossing rhetorical hand grenades at each other in order to soften up the other side for negotiations. There are too many people with a stake in this."
Lakefield said he is committed to preserving as many jobs as he can and would like to grow the airline. "But given our current cost structure, we can't preserve any jobs with any certainty and we certainly cannot grow," he said. "Furthermore we cannot control our destiny if we waste the entire summer without reaching labor agreements because then we are going to be faced with even uglier choices."
Respectfully,
USA320Pilot
