Crew of a United Airlines flight walk through the terminal building at San Francisco International Airport on April 12, 2020 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The biggest US airlines are making money again. Trade unions don’t want them to spend it on share buybacks.
A requirement of the $54 billion in federal aid that airlines received to pay workers during the pandemic prevented carriers from buying back stock. This ban is valid until the 4th of September. 30.
But in a public campaign and petition launched on Thursday, some of the airline’s largest trade unions representing more than 170,000 pilots, flight attendants, customer service agents and other industry employees urged airlines to reform their operations and invest in workers before spending on buying back their stock. .
The four largest US airlines – Delta, United, America and Southwest – spent about $40 billion buying back shares of their companies between 2015 and early 2020, according to S&P Global.
Many of the union-represented workers advocating the resumption of buybacks are in contract negotiations with their carriers. In addition to higher wages, unions are pushing airlines for more predictable schedules after last-minute air travel chaos wrecked plans for customers and employees alike.
Labor unions pushed lawmakers for the aid package early in the pandemic in 2020, after initial opposition in Congress, some of which was rooted in pre-pandemic airline share buybacks. “There are no bailouts for the blank check industry,” Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, said at the time.
“We cannot allow CEOs to send a cent to Wall Street before they fix operational issues and conclude contract negotiations that ensure wages and benefits are preserved and attract people to airline jobs,” said Sarah Nelson, the international president of the Flight Attendants Association, which represents about 50,000 of the airline’s flight attendants. cabin crew members, in a statement announcing the anti-repurchase campaign on Thursday.
Despite the rise in bookings, a jump in costs, including fuel and labor, affected the bottom lines of US carriers and took their stock prices behind the broader market.
The NYSE Arca Airline Index, which mostly tracks North American airlines, is down about 21% so far this year, about double the S&P 500 index.