American broke promises, ex-TWA workers testify By PHILIP DINE Post-Dispatch updated: 06/12/2003 10:00 PM WASHINGTON - Former employees of St. Louis-based Trans World Airlines testified at a Senate hearing Thursday about what they called broken promises that have cost them their jobs since the airline was acquired by American Airlines two years ago. They said the new employer has ignored a pledge to integrate them into its work force and to take account of their seniority. An American executive said the airline had kept its promises and would not reconsider its seniority policy. Former TWA flight attendant Karen Schooling, who began her career 28 years ago at the age of 19, told senators about coping with her husband's death from cancer three years ago and caring for their disabled 17-year-old son, who weighs 32 pounds and needs constant care. Despite her tenure, she will be furloughed July 2, she said, and will get only 30 days of health care coverage and no severance pay. "I am facing total and complete financial devastation. I can tolerate economic hardship. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing in the great state of Missouri, but I do not question why God has given me this life," said Schooling, of Independence. "What I cannot tolerate is the fact that American Airlines has broken its commitment to all former TWA employees when it promised a fair and equitable process to determine seniority integration. I cannot tolerate the life-threatening hardship that it will cause my son, Ryan." Sherry Cooper of St. Louis was hired by TWA as a flight attendant in 1975 and laid off by American last month. She testified that TWA workers were "stapled to the bottom" of American workers in terms of seniority. That means, she said, that since the airline industry ran into trouble after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the 20,000 TWA pilots, flight attendants and others have been laid off before American's 100,000 workers. Theodore Case, a 16-year pilot also slated for layoff July 2, said pilots hired by American two years ago remain on the job. "It is now clear American's promise of employment was a hollow one, designed only to quell Congress' concerns and to clear regulatory hurdles to close the transaction," Case said. After hearing the witnesses, Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., asked American Airlines if it would try to hammer out a more equitable approach with the former TWA employees. "Would you be willing to sit down and make it better?" Talent asked. The company would not, responded Jeff Brundage, American's vice president for employee relations. He said TWA's employees "knew exactly what they were doing" when they waived their rights to seniority arbitration, which American had made a precondition of the deal. Though the plight of the former TWA workers "deeply, deeply hurts me," Brundage said, to change the agreement in an effort to help them would set a bad precedent for future deals that save failing companies. The hearing was held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., is the committee's chairman. Talent attended at Bond's invitation. After the hearing, Bond and Talent said they would look into legislative remedies to require arbitration over seniority when work forces are merged and the unions can't agree on how to evaluate seniority. Talent also said he hoped that getting the former TWA employees' stories - and the company's statements - on record would help the workers with a lawsuit they have filed against American. What was promised? In question is exactly what American promised TWA employees. Brundage said that American agreed to hire the TWA employees - even though it didn't have to because the deal was an asset acquisition, not a merger - and to pay them at the higher American rates according to their length of service. The company did what it promised, he said. But, he added, American made it clear that it would not impose seniority in terms of job protection, because that was a contractual issue opposed by its own unions. Instead, American offered to hire a facilitator to try to get American's and TWA's unions to agree on an approach, which they proved unable to do. The TWA unions went along with those terms, Brundage said, because the alternative to an American purchase was worse - liquidation of TWA, which would cost all of them their jobs. During court proceedings on the sale two years ago in Delaware, the judge hearing the case indicated that not allowing American to buy TWA quickly would almost surely lead to TWA's disappearance. Bond and Talent painted a different picture, of a TWA that had options at the time and whose workers went along with the deal, including yielding their rights to arbitrate seniority, because they believed American's promise of fair treatment. Talent said that TWA represented a valuable acquisition for American. "You guys didn't do this out of charity," he told Brundage. "You thought it was a good deal for American Airlines." The former TWA employees said they would not have agreed to yield their rights had they known how things would end up. "Unfortunately, when it came time to cut, the blade fell almost exclusively on former TWA employees," Bond said. Talent said that if he and other legislators had understood what American was going to do in terms of not protecting the jobs of TWA employees, the acquisition would have faced stiff opposition in getting the required federal approval. "In all my years in public service, and as a former labor lawyer, I've never seen a merger that was as disadvantageous to one party as this one," Talent said. TWA's employees, he said, "built their lives around the reasonable expectation" that American would consider their seniority in protecting their jobs, and as a result took out mortgages, sent children to school and made other major decisions. Brundage responded that there was "no way we could have anticipated the trials and tribulations" resulting from the terrorist attacks and the airline industry's "tailspin." Both the former TWA employees and American agreed in separate interviews that TWA workers have been disproportionately laid off, though they differed on the degree. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.carib-link.net/naparima/naps.html TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************