US Airways Pilots Agree To Wage Cut
4,800 pilots at US Airways voted yesterday by a margin of over seventy-five percent to accept a twenty-six percent average reduction in wages and benefits through 2008, in return for 19.3 percent of the company?s stock. The company, which will save $465 million a year for the length of the cuts, last month reached a tentative agreement on wage and benefit reductions with the 323 member Transport Workers of America local that represents its dispatchers and crew trainers, and its flight attendants will vote today on proposed $76 million a year cuts. Seeking an overall $1 billion in annual labor cost reductions, the airline has had significantly less luck in extracting $222 million annual cuts from the International Association of Machinists local representing 13,000 US Airways mechanics, and $70 million per year from the union representing its 7,200 reservation, gate and ticket agents.
See "US Airways Pilots Agree To Wage Cut", KEITH L. ALEXANDER, The Washington Post, August 8, 2002