Grim time for airline workers

[struggle4progress]

By Matthew Barakat
Associated Press

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The airline industry’s relentless drive to slash costs, amid a backdrop of high fuel prices and low fares, is leaving employees with a bleak financial outlook.

Machinists at US Airways, the nation’s seventh-largest carrier, face pay cuts of up to 35 percent and the loss of thousands of union jobs after a bankruptcy judge Thursday unilaterally canceled their contract. <snip>

Tommie Hutto-Blake, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said the judge’s decision "should send a chill up the spine of every working American in this country of ours."

He said the ruling eliminated "hard-earned pensions, wages, benefits and work rules at the sound of a gavel while maintaining the pensions and salaries of upper management whose decisions steered their company into bankruptcy." <snip>

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/01082005/biz_nati/58077.htm