United’s CEO Rakes in $40 Million while Airline Staff Pensions Sink

by Mike Hall, Jul 16, 2007

Dianne Tamuk started flying with United Airlines in 1978. Nearly 30 years later, as president of the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) New York council, she has survived the heavy economic turbulence that has left United and the rest of the nation’s major airlines and their workers at a far different destination than they had planned.

A Sunday Washington Post story by Dale Russakoff describes Tamuk, as “the walking embodiment of the eroding middle class.” Still flying out of John F. Kennedy International Airport following the airline’s 2002 bankruptcy:

Tamuk’s income fell from $47,000 in 1994 to $43,000 last year, even though she is working significantly more hours….Her pension is worth 40 percent less than she had counted on because it stopped accruing value with the default; instead of an expected $2,400 a month at age 60, she was notified that she will get $1,440. United is matching employee contributions to 401(k)s, but Tamuk said she had to reduce her contributions because, with less pay, she can’t save as much. Her expenses are on a steep incline: She and her husband have a son entering college next year and a daughter three years behind.

In the early phase of the downturn, she said, her loyalty to United only deepened. She recalled the horror of hijacked United planes crashing into the World Trade Center and a field in Shanksville, Pa.—a day that turned flight attendants into first responders.

While Tamuk, her colleagues at United and at other airlines and in other industries have been slammed by what the Post calls “the global forces transforming the economy,” CEO’s and top executives are flying first class.

She said she feels ground down by an economy in which many major corporations peg workers’ wages to those paid by low-cost rivals while paying top officers on the ever-rising scale of Fortune 500 executives.

It’s the rising fortunes of United executives that get to her. Tamuk and her colleagues have a code word for the disparity: $40 million. That’s what several publications reported was the 2006 package awarded United chief executive Glenn F. Tilton for steering the company through bankruptcy reorganization.

“Forty million—a constant on the airplane,” said Tamuk. “You hear flight attendants asking, ‘Who needs $40 million?’ “

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