The Transportation Workers Union has created a compensation game to embarrass the top brass at AA and link their million dollar pay days with the AIG scandle.
PLAY THE AMERICAN EXEC CHECK GAME
The game challenges the public to click and drag a CEO to a desk marked with differing dollar figures corresponding to their published compensation. Viewers are later provided with information on how to protest the bonuses the American executives are taking home.
American Airlines executives, after locking in worker pay cuts, voted themselves massive bonuses and more are expected. Flight attendants have recently been laid off and other workers have not received increases in pay or benefits while executives have been lining their pockets.
“In many ways American has become the poster boy for outrageous executive bonuses,” said TWU International President James C. Little. Despite running a money-losing airline with declining share value, AMR executives have taken $300 million in bonuses in recent years with more awards expected in mid-April while the wages of frontline employees essentially have been frozen after 30 percent pay cuts in 2003.
American Airlines has been a good example of a company working together to solve difficult problems. Their maintenance facilities are still humming along and have become a profit center while those of many other airlines has been shuttered and maintenance has been outsources.
In recent years, the Transport Workers Union, working with AMR, has found ways to reduce the cost of airplane maintenance including major overhauls. TWU also has worked with the airline to jointly market maintenance facilities to other airlines. AMR now generates hundreds of millions of dollars in outside revenue through these efforts. Despite these improvements and hundreds of millions of dollars saved through other efforts to boost productivity, workers at American and American Eagle have been unable to reach agreement with management on either long-term contracts or ones that would serve on an interim basis.
Meanwhile, executive bonuses and sky-high salaries persist.
The Transport Workers Union is outraged as are the pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions. Which makes for a very unhappy airline as bonus time comes again to AA’s executives this April.
PLAY THE AMERICAN EXEC CHECK GAME
The game challenges the public to click and drag a CEO to a desk marked with differing dollar figures corresponding to their published compensation. Viewers are later provided with information on how to protest the bonuses the American executives are taking home.
