Posted on Fri, Mar. 28, 2003



Pawlenty questions NWA execs' bonuses
BY CASEY SELIX
Pioneer Press




Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday he plans to chat with Northwest Airlines executives about whether they should take six-figure bonuses when 4,900 airline employees are losing their jobs.
"I don't see how they can justify it. … I don't think it's fair,'' Pawlenty told about 70 Northwest workers who gathered in Bloomington to learn about services from the state's dislocated-worker program.
"Our concerns aren't about a bailout for the company, but for the workers who lost their jobs,'' the governor told the gathering, many of them mechanics — the group hardest hit in the layoffs with some 2,000 job losses expected systemwide.
Thursday's meeting at the Thunderbird Hotel in Bloomington is at least the second time the Republican governor has visited with workers after a mass layoff. He also met with Blandin paper mill workers in Grand Rapids after they lost their jobs.
"I think that it was extraordinary that he made it'' to the meetings, said Paul Moe, director of the state's dislocated-worker program. "I told him (Thursday) that in my tenure, a governor has never come and had the guts to stand in front of 60 to 70 workers who were just laid off.''
Pawlenty also said Thursday that the state would take a "hard and critical" look at whether the airline is using war as an excuse for the latest round of layoffs. And, he said that if the federal government does provide more money to bail out airlines there should be some strings attached.
Mechanics complained about the airline outsourcing mechanics' work to Singapore, China and Louisiana, where the work is done more cheaply though not necessarily as competently.
"The company doesn't want to pay us a living wage,'' mechanic Dennis Schumaker told Pawlenty. "We are seeing lousy work come back (from outsourcing), and we have to clean it up. When we get our equipment back we say this is garbage.''
The governor said that although the state and companies have to compete globally, that should not be based solely on reducing labor costs.
Bonuses announced this week are a particular sore point with the union members, who have been asked to absorb most of the cuts the airline says it needs to survive. The Eagan-based air carrier paid $450,000 in bonuses to its top two executives in 2002 as Northwest lost $798 million.
"We will have no comment on the governor's comments,'' Northwest Airlines spokeswoman Mary Stanik said Thursday.
Meanwhile, state House DFL members called on Northwest executives Thursday to turn over their stock options and bonuses to the state dislocated workers fund.
Minnesota is using $2 million from the fund to help Northwest workers while it waits for approval of a federal emergency grant. The state has applied for $13.9 million in aid to help airline workers and others affected by the layoffs find new jobs or retraining.
In another development, Northwest filed two notices of plans to lay off 33 more workers in the state, bringing the total Minnesota dismissals to 2,031. At Northwest's other major hubs, Michigan is losing more than 1,000 jobs and Tennessee, 174. Northwest has not said where other layoffs will occur.
Pawlenty told reporters afterward he planned to share various concerns at some point with Northwest chief executive Richard Anderson. Still, he acknowledged that the state doesn't have regulatory power over the airline.
Pawlenty also promised to look into the mechanics union's collective bargaining agreement after a worker said the union hasn't been able to get grievances resolved in a prompt fashion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Casey Selix can be reached at cselix@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-2123.