The wage rates are going to sweep through the industry. Although it is expensive, he says it will mean that there's a better chance that all contracts up for renewal this year will be settled without strikes. Unions at Northwest, Delta, United and American have threatened to strike this year. He says that although airline employees'wages are rising faster than inflation, in many cases they are only making up for wage growth lost in the 1990s when employees had to give ground to help financially strapped airlines. Andy Deane, a union spokesman.
Many people see airline pilots as highly paid.
But Delta's 4 recent years of record profits were made possible in part by the pay cuts pilots took in 1995, he says. Delta isn't complaining about the contract's cost, which it has not yet released. The threat of a strike is probably behind it. The cost of an extended pilots strike is almost unimaginable. To prevent it, Delta had hired former National Republican Committee chairman Haley Barbour to lobby the Republican Bush administration for support.