WIN Week In Review March 21-23, 2008

By Doug Cunningham

Thirteen thousand Delta Airlines flight attendants will get a union election to decide whether to join the Association of Flight Attendants – CWA. The National Mediation Board this week authorized the election.

Late Tuesday Delta told workers that it plans to offer a voluntary buyout in an attempt to cut 2000 jobs. According to the airline, pilots will not be impacted by the buyout. On Monday, Delta pilots told the airline that discussions concerning the merger of seniority lists with Northwest Airlines had collapsed. Jesse Russell has more.

As Delta and Northwest Airlines continue to move toward a merger the pilots for the two companies had been in discussions over how to best combine seniority lists. Those discussions ended on Monday with no resolution between the two sides. The announcement was made when Delta’s division of the Air Line Pilots Association sent a letter to members saying that discussions with Northwest’s pilots had broken off. Northwest and Delta had hoped for a smooth merger of the seniority lists and in order to encourage the pilots offered stock options and a voting seat on the board. It is unknown how the collapse of discussions will impact those offers. Seniority determines which pilots fly on which plane, increases job security, and dictates the pay level. Northwest has more senior pilots then Delta.

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The Center for Economic and Policy Research says the various plans to deal with the sub-prime mortgage crisis provide little relief for most working families affected by it. Instead, banks are the major beneficiaries, according to a report from the center called “Sub-Prime rescue Plans: Backdoor Bank Bailouts. Economist Dean Baker says under these plans taxpayers ultimately underwrite bailouts that allow banks to make billions of dollars in profits. But working families will face a major loss of equity in their homes and wind up paying far more to stay in their homes than to rent similar properties.

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With nearly four thousand U.S. troops dead and roughly 60,000 wounded and the dollar cost of the war nearing $500 billion working families are paying a terrible price for Bush’s war of choice. In Washington D.C. at the Winter Soldier hearings soldiers told of atrocities like whole Iraqi families being cut down by machine fire at traffic checkpoints, of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees, widespread racism and sexism directed at both the occupied peoples and our own troops. Mike Prisner served with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq and was at Abu Ghraib.

[Prisner]: “The enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable. The enemy is the CEO ‘s who lay us off from our jobs when it’s profitable. It’s the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable. It’s the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemy is not 5,000 miles away, they are right here at home. And if we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers, we can stop this war, we can stop this government and we can create a better world.”

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SEIU Local 32BJ Vice President Kyle Bragg says building workers in the Bronx took a stand this week by threatening a strike and won wage, pension and health care improvements.

[Bragg]: They deserve respect and dignity on the job. One way of doing that is to be able to come to work with a peace of mind, knowing that you make a livable wage and that you have benefits in place that will provide security for yourselves and your family