How about that. Did you know tax payer dollars helped Delta Airlines to totally restructure their business?
the company received $5.6 billion in federal aid from the CARES Act last year. It also got $3.3 billion from the second round of relief funding this year and $3.1 billion from the American Rescue Plan, which included some federal loans.
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They didn’t use bailout money to just stay in business and keep people employed. Nope. They issued buyouts to get rid of old employees in favor of younger people,
The Atlanta-based airline used buyouts and early retirements to cut about 18,000 people from its staff of 90,000 last year as the pandemic caused air travel to drop 60%.
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fully funded their pension obligations,
The airline used some of its funds to make payments into its pension funds, allowing it to fully fund the plan. Delta does not expect to have to make any further contributions to the plans in the future.
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and restructured vendors.
The company has also cut costs by replacing smaller, older planes with larger, newer, more fuel-efficient planes, and by restructuring how it handles staffing and uses contractors.
In Atlanta, for example, Delta is replacing in-flight caterer Gate Gourmet with other companies including Newrest, Mainline Aviation and Sky Cafe U.S.
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The used the opportunity of the pandemic to change every aspect of their business because they couldn’t do it when they were operating at full capacity. What does the travelling public get for it? NOTHING. NADA. Not even a gratis stale sandwich.
Shouldn’t there be a lawsuit or two about a company openly advocating age discrimination?
The early retirements have “given a lot of younger people opportunities to step up. We have a younger team going forward and we’re getting the juniority benefits,” Bastian said.
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Have you ever heard the term “juniority benefits”?
Image by Cor Gaasbeek from Pixabay