101 Degradations

I wish this was a “shaggy dog” story, but as Kate Fratti wrote about in today’s Courier Times, the executives of Northwest Airlines prepared a booklet for their terminated employees in which they, among other things, advised their former workers to clip supermarket coupons, brown-bag their lunches (assuming they actually need to do that since they no longer have jobs, as Fratti pointed out), turn down their thermostats, and, for their female former employees, “borrow a dress for a big night out.”

We clip coupons and I brown-bag my lunch most days, but though that does help with our expenses, there’s no freakin’ way that’s going to do much to replace income lost by a full-time salaried job with benefits.

As Fratti noted…

Believe it or not, the sheet — “101 Ways to Save Money” — suggests, among other things, that the freshly pink-slipped not be shy about pulling things out of other people's trash.

Like what, their dignity?

If the mission was to motivate the unemployed, the sheet was a failure. If the goal was to further humiliate outsourced workers, or make some near homicidal, the outside agency that prepared the list is owed a performance bonus.

I found myself wondering about a company that could come up with something like this, so I investigated Northwest Airlines a bit. I discovered that Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson and President Douglas Steenland received bonuses of approximately $2.5 million in 2003 despite the fact that it lobbied the unionized work force for wage and work concessions at the same time.

However, these two captains of industry realized, as Northwest slid into bankruptcy, that they needed to actually cut their obscene salaries as the airlines’ pilots voted on a package of wage and benefit concessions in May of this year.

Don’t feel any need to cry tears for Doug Steenland, though. As the article from May notes...

As part of his total compensation, Steenland also received $2.24 million in long-term payouts tied to the sale of e-commerce technology, such as the Internet travel sites Hotwire and Orbitz. Northwest sold them for $190 million several years ago. It originally cost Northwest about $35 million to develop.

Northwest said Steenland received the cash award as part of a long-term compensation program to encourage executives to create new types of business for the airline.

One airline analyst said Steenland's pay doesn't appear to be out of scale.

"It's not a 9-to-5 job," said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, a Colorado-based airline industry consulting company. "I don't find it outrageous.

"I'm not going to work under than (sic) kind of pressure for slightly over $500,000. Northwest is getting a bargain."

“I’m not going to work under that kind of pressure for slightly over $500,000.”

The arrogance is just about unspeakable. No wonder this carrier is going belly-up. Also…

Karen Schultz, a Northwest flight attendant and a board member for the Professional Flight Attendants Association, said Northwest executives are taking pay cuts and the company is having a hard time retaining management, but her membership is looking at whether or not they will be able to put food on the table or buy a new car next year.

"We have to ask ourselves that when executives bring a company into bankruptcy should we continue to be paying them massive salaries?" asked Schultz.

An excellent question, and the answer is plainly obvious to me, and probably many other people also.

I just heard about this organization a few days ago, and if this story isn’t a reason to join, then I don’t know what is.

Update 8/30: As Prof. Marcus said in his comment...