ATLANTA – Delta Air Lines said Tuesday it will offer voluntary severance payouts to roughly 30,000 employees — more than half its work force — and cut domestic capacity by an extra 5 percent this year as part of an overhaul of its business plan to deal with soaring fuel prices. Executives at Atlanta-based Delta said in a memo to employees that the airline’s goal is to cut 2,000 frontline, administrative and management jobs through the voluntary program, attrition and other initiatives. Delta had 55,044 total full-time employees as of the end of last year.
Oil prices recently cracked $111 a barrel, nearly twice what they were a year ago.
The memo from Chief Executive Richard Anderson and President Ed Bastian did not mention Delta’s talks with Northwest Airlines Corp. about a combination that would create the world’s largest airline. Bastian was updating investors Tuesday at a conference in New York. On Monday, Delta’s pilots union said it had told company executives it can’t agree on seniority issues with its counterpart at Northwest, raising serious doubts about the prospect of a combination of the two companies.
Of course the bigger story here is the daily creep of oil prices, and the snowball effect this is going to have on the transportation industry.
AND the effect it will have on anything transported, which is nearly everything now since hardly anything is produced locally anymore, especially food.
This is not progress. Something needs to be done to bring locally produced food back, en masse, to the mega-food markets – or better yet, to the small food markets and have regulations allowing these guys in as opposed to keeping small food markets out of many areas. Yes, there are regional laws that make it impossible for small groceries and butchers to operate anymore, and it’s not just a cost issue with consumers as demand for these type of operations and locally produced foods is UP.
As difficult as it may be for you to understand (McCullough), the rising price of oil is less a problem than would be the falling price of oil. If oil prices take a quick steady downturn, we are all in for a very serious economic time.
#2 Not sure I get your drift. High oil usually means high gas prices. High gas prices have a similar effect to high taxes… to remove spendable income from the masses. People spending money is a (if not the) primary driver of a healthy economy.
#4. A very smart observation. That would account for why nearly all the laid off workers are managers and administrators – no baggage handlers, engineers and crews.
They are only offering the buyout to that many people. They expect a much smaller number to actually take them up on it.
Don
#6 – you are correct. They only hope that 2000 of the 55,000 employees take the offer (rounding down the 44 who likely quit today or were fired for job abandonment). So that’s a 3.6% reduction versus 50%.
Even the linked MSNBC article got it’s headline correct.
On the other hand, maybe 50% of the workforce will panic and end up leaving… glad I flew AA today…
roemun
As difficult as it may be for you to understand (McCullough), the rising price of oil is less a problem than would be the falling price of oil. If oil prices take a quick steady downturn, we are all in for a very serious economic time.
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Yes do please explain…
Moron.
Todd Henkel
#6 – you are correct. They only hope that 2000 of the 55,000 employees take the offer (rounding down the 44 who likely quit today or were fired for job abandonment). So that’s a 3.6% reduction versus 50%.
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Gee, the staff at Dvorak fuck up another story because of their laziness in actually bothering to read what news stories that they aggregate?
WHAT A SURPRISE!!!