"U.S. airlines turn to employees for cost-cutting ideas"

Monday, April 9, 2007

Airlines turn to employees for cost-cutting ideas
By Ben Mutzabaugh
USA Today


Despite the notoriously frosty relations common between labor and management
at most U.S. carriers, company leaders are increasingly turning to
front-line workers for cost-cutting suggestions, the St. Paul Pioneer Press
reports. "As jet fuel continues to hover around $2 a gallon -- nearly triple
the cost just five years ago -- airlines are turning to employees to learn
more ways to save fuel. Ideas, no matter how small, can add up to big dollar
signs with airlines using billions of gallons of fuel each year. Every 25
pounds removed from a plane saves $200,000 a year," the paper says. 

"As a line pilot, you're out there and you see how the operation really
works," Lindsay Fenwick, a Northwest pilot who retired eight days ago, says
about the unique perspective front-line workers have. He's one of many
Northwest workers who have used their front-line observations to suggest
cost-cutting ideas to management. "These are no-brainers," he tells the
Pioneer Press. Northwest has received more than 300 such ideas from its
workers since last summer. At Continental, the Pioneer Press writes "more
than 400 suggestions by employees helped save about $190 million, or 95
million gallons of fuel, in 2006."

Industry consultant Robert Mann says: "It's not just public relations.
People do feel that (companies) are listening. And people see their ideas
implemented." However, not all workers have been swayed. "Northwest has done
this before -- asked for input from employees. In the end, no one received
credit, no one saved our jobs and no one avoided pay cuts," Terri Kurita, a
28-year Northwest flight attendant tells the Pioneer Press. "Everybody's
pretty jaded by the experience."

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