Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian was at the White House Thursday morning to meet with Trump along with CEOs from the other major US carriers. After the meeting he said Delta plans to hire 25K employees over the next five years (via growth and attrition)…if Trump helps to level the playing field by taking action against the Gulf carriers.
Following the meeting, Bastian shared the following: “I appreciate the opportunity to meet with President Trump today along with colleagues from across the industry and look forward to continuing our efforts to make U.S. aviation great. We had a positive discussion about many of the major issues facing U.S. travelers, airline employees and the aviation industry, which is a vital economic engine for America. I look forward to working with President Trump, Secretary Chao, Secretary Tillerson and other members of the administration on issues important to Delta, our employees and our customers. Delta has been leading the charge to expand and upgrade our nation’s airports, with extensive improvement projects planned and underway at major Delta hubs. At Delta, we plan to hire 25,000 people over the next five years with the support of a level playing field globally.”
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4 comments
It’s only “crony capitalism” when someone else does it.
Yah minimum wage jobs, they will hire 25,000 while firing 25,000 as well.
1) How many of those are going to be Delta Global Services jobs? DGS hardly pays above minimum wage, and Delta seems to be interested in outsourcing at every opportunity they get. Sure, Delta created jobs, but they will also add to the means tested assistance rolls. I hardly call a DGS employee working 29 hours a week at minimum wage with no benefits a job. (To be fair, nearly all airlines do some sort of poverty level outsourcing, but the definition of job is still troubling in all of these circumstances)
2) How are these jobs going to be held over the administration’s head? If a ME3 company wants to fly to the US, will they ax them all? Will all of them have to leave? How will foreign carriers be curtailed?
3) If they get a “level playing field” will that result in a reduction in air travel and thus negate some of these 25,000 jobs? How many other jobs would be lost?
Why on earth would they want a level playing field? To disassociate themselves from all of the allied foreign airlines that get tons of subsidies would be horribly stupid, not to mention the gobs of subsidies that they’ve gotten themselves.
Oh, wait (face smack)! They don’t want a level playing field at all. They want to be able to hose select competition, in absolute contravention of the Open Skies treaty, because now they find the treaty inconvenient, after decades of advantage. Other (read: foreign) airlines that aren’t part of the Big 4, can’t threaten to offer cheap fares and good service domestically, but they can do so across the Atlantic. The fact that U.S. airlines made as much money as all of the other airlines in the world combined for the last few years should apparently hold no bearing here. Our airlines are raking in stupid amounts of money, yet now cry for selective rule enforcement because on at least one front, they face true competition. It’s painfully obvious that this is a supremely bad idea. Let’s see what happens, and whether the American public is favored over more corporate greed. A small but true test.