I don’t fly on Delta or Northwest much these days, so I don’t really have any personal insight into whether the proposed merger of the two airlines makes much business sense. One thing I do know, however, is that making one strong and profitable company out of two struggling ones is near impossible if you don’t get the workforce to buy in.
And, that’s where this one may have a struggle. A story in The Detroit News headlined “Wary workers cloud Delta-Northwest merger” talks about the challenge of merging the workforces of union-dominated Northwest (with about 22,500 union employees out of 32,000 total) with primarily nonunion Delta (where 6,300 pilots and a small number of dispatchers out of 47,000 employees are represented).
“Delta’s an interesting company in that it’s been able to maintain a decidedly nonunion culture while staying on relatively good terms with its employees,” said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an Evergreen, Colorado-based consulting firm. “Even through bankruptcy, management has succeeded in convincing employees that their best representative is themselves.”
But, The Detroit News points out, “selling that culture to Northwest’s entrenched unions won’t be easy. Even before merger talk began, the Association of Flight Attendants got enough signatures on a petition requesting a unionization vote of 12,000 Delta flight attendants. Neither Delta nor the union has speculated on the outcome of the current election.”
If they can make this merger work, the combined airline would be the largest in the world. “The new Delta,” says The Detroit News, “is expected to employ about 75,000 people after the two companies are fully integrated. [But] employees worry: Will management follow through on promises not to cut jobs or close hubs? If the companies are in such dire financial straits because of fuel prices, will they be looking to cut wages next?”
Those are all good questions, because those are all reasonable worries for workers to have. Delta has promised that no frontline workers will lose their jobs in the merger, but is that realistic given the huge and unrelenting rise in fuel prices?
I question that promise, and so does Joe Tiberi, spokesman for the union that represents 9,500 Northwest baggage handlers. “There’s no way they can combine without massive losses of jobs,” Tiberi told The Detroit News. “We’re also worried about merging our unionized workforce with Delta’s nonunionized workers. We have pensions, but they don’t. We have no guarantee Delta wouldn’t want to get rid of our union.”
It’s hard enough to make one good airline out of two struggling ones when everyone is on board. But it is damn near impossible if you have union squabbling and critical workforce issues to hurdle. The only saving grace here is that Delta’s management seems to be driving this deal, and frankly, Delta’s management seems a lot more sensitive to worker issues than Northwest’s does . That raises the odds of success, but not enough for me gamble my next trip on Delta. I’d be surprised if a lot of other frequent travelers don’t feel the same way.
I try my best NOT to write about the newspaper business much in this blog. Part of the reason is because I was a newspaper editor for 20 years and just feel there are better things to write about. But it’s also because newspapers (specifically, newspaper owners and managers) are so screwed up that I could blog about them just about every day.
Those pale in comparison with this one, though: how MediaNews’ Los Angeles News Group (owned and operated by Dean Singleton) is constantly forcing many of its workers to move from office to office around Southern California, according to blogger and former L.A. MediaNews sports columnist Paul Oberjuerge.
As he puts it, “More than 100 full-time newsroom professionals have been ordered to report to a job site different than the one they were hired at. Sometimes 44 miles away. And some have been moved as many as three times in a year. All in the name of (phantom) efficiencies and all with the unstated but overt threat of do it or get out. To make this clear: Employees were hired by the Tribune or Daily Bulletin or Sun … then later told (years and years later, in some cases) their jobs now were located in another newsroom in another city, and tough luck if it causes upheaval in your life.”
If talent is as important as so many businesses say it is, well, this is not a good way to treat your people unless your real goal is something else entirely. My cynical side immediately goes there—this is just a way to wear down people you want out and get them to leave without having to pay any severance. That may be the ultimate goal, but it could also be the work of brain-dead managers who have little talent for planning or realize the consequences of their actions. Or, it could be a little bit of both.
This is a great way to demoralize a workforce, better even than Sam Zell telling some of his people that “all of you are overhead.” It is also a great candidate for next year’s Stupidus Maximus Award that I give out recognizing “the most ignorant, shortsighted and dumb workforce management practice of the year.”
I just awarded the first Stupidus Maximus Award to Circuit City “for the decision to fire 3,400 experienced salespeople, or 9 percent of its workforce, because they were making too much money, replacing them with cheaper, less-experienced personnel.”
That was pretty bad, I thought, but the MediaNews decision to jerk around workers by continually forcing them to report to work at different places in Southern California without any real concern for what that decision is doing to their lives may actually top what Circuit City did.
Can you top this one for management idiocy? Maybe so. And if that’s the case, please let me know. I’m always looking for Stupidus Maximus nominees, so feel free to make them here as a blog comment or e-mail them to me at jhollon@workforce.com.
Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon about this, but I don’t have much use for April Fools’ Day in the workplace.
Don’t get me wrong; I think a work environment with laughter and humor improves employee morale and overall productivity. My firsthand experience in managing people for more than 20 years is that they just do a better job and accomplish more in a lighthearted workplace culture than they do in an overly serious one.
The survey asked the following question: “How appropriate do you think it is to play April Fools’ Day jokes in the office?” While only 29 percent of marketing executives found such jokes to be very or somewhat appropriate, 51 percent of advertising executives thought April Fools’ Day high jinks are OK.
A similar survey by Careerbuilder.com found that 32 percent of workers say that they have been involved with April Fools’ Day pranks at work, either on the giving or receiving end. It even went so far as to list the top 10 most memorable pranks. These included:
• Sending a fake love note to a co-worker from another co-worker.
• Calling electric company and using a co-worker’s name (and personal information) and saying he was moving, so the electricity got turned off at the co-worker’s house.
• Adjusting the sprayer in the kitchen sink to squirt co-workers when they turned on the water.
• Putting a for-sale ad for a co-worker’s home in the newspaper.
Am I the only one who thinks these “pranks” are not only stupid, but could result in legal action from the unsuspecting workers on the receiving end? An open workplace that allows people to joke and have a little fun is generally a good thing, but “pranks” that are directed at specific employees or groups hold up people to unwarranted ridicule and sap morale and esprit de corps.
Megan Slabinski, executive director of the Creative Group, probably said it best: “A distasteful or mean-spirited joke can easily damage someone’s professional reputation, co-worker relationships and career prospects. … What is viewed as lighthearted fun in one environment may be frowned upon in another.”
In other words, what qualifies as April Fools’ Day “fun” depends on your definition of the word (or maybe on whether it was your house that was listed as being for sale). Since everyone views such things very differently, my advice is to avoid pranks like these at all costs. There’s little upside, and a whole lot of downside, when you engage in such workplace “fun.”
There seems to be a group of topics that get consultants and PR people fired up—topics that are built around a perceived but overblown workforce problem that gives them a chance to offer up their “expertise” every year. You know the issues I’m talking about:
Office romance at Valentine’s Day;
The perils of the office Christmas party in December; and,
March Madness—the NCAA men’s basketball tournament—as a workplace time-waster.
As I wrote here last year, “It’s Madness to Worry About March Madness.” As I wrote then, “All of this talk about lost productivity because of March Madness is nonsense. I haven’t seen any credible research that supports the premise, and the ‘data’ that is used to make the point is soft and suspect.”
Well, March Madness is here again, and so are the consultants, experts and surveys that claim it is a huge problem. CareerBuilder released a survey this week saying 19 percent of workers are involved in March Madness pools (a surprisingly low number, in my view). It implied, without citing any evidence or research, that “productivity in the office may suffer a potential slowdown.” And global outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray and Christmas offered up its nutty annual “cost” of March Madness in the workplace, claiming that the “annual distraction could cost employers as much as $1.7 billion in wasted work time over the 16 business days of the [basketball] tournament.”
Crain’s Detroit Business, a sister publication of Workforce Management, had an interesting story this week that took the position that fantasy sports in the workplace—and by extension, things like March Madness or Super Bowl pools—can really be a good thing for workers and their employers. The headline said it all: “Are Fantasy Sports at Work Bad? Some Executives Bet Not.”
In short, the notion that there is time wasted by employees due to March Madness is just another urban legend. There is no more evidence of workplace productivity losses because of March Madness than there is evidence of alligators in the sewers, Elvis living with aliens, or the Loch Ness Monster. I like fairy tales, but March Madness as a workplace problem is ridiculous.
I’m not a big fan of Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, and there is a simple reason why: I’ve always thought he lacked any real touch in managing people. From my perspective, he was an overcompensated tough-guy caught up in his own self-importance.
When the most senior person in an organization sets the right tone, it can motivate and focus the company, but when the message from the top comes down like an edict from God, well, most workers don’t respond to that very well.
Bob Nardelli has never been about setting the right tone.
Operating an American automaker is very different from running Home Depot, but Nardelli’s tactics are the same. His latest employee-friendly edict: telling all workers they would “be required to use two weeks of their vacation time in July, in a companywide shutdown intended to improve the automaker’s efficiency and boost productivity,” according to a story in The Detroit Free Press.
Chrysler lost some $2.9 billion last year, so clearly, management needs to take some bold steps. And, according to a company spokesperson, the average Chrysler nonunion worker is allowed to take a total of four weeks of vacation a year. So is it a big problem to require people to take some of their time in the summer when it would help the company?
It’s probably not, but given that most people plan for vacations on a regular calendar year basis, why didn’t Chrysler management roll out this new requirement in the last quarter of 2007—in time for employees to plan for this year?
According to the Free Press, “Workers were surprised by the announcement. One told the Free Press that people were puzzled and unhappy that the new policy was not put into place at the beginning of the year or the start of next year, and pointed out that people are concerned that if they’ve used their vacation time already they’ll be forced to take unpaid time off in July.”
A company spokesperson, in a masterful use of management speak, seemed to confirm this.
The Free Press reported: “ ‘We’re not taking vacation away from people. We’re requiring them to realign their schedules to this time frame,’ said Chrysler spokeswoman Mary Beth Halprin. Employees who don’t have enough remaining vacation may be able to work in critical areas of the company that must continue to operate, she said, but acknowledged that ‘one option might be unpaid vacation.’ ”
I’d love to see Chrysler, and all the American automakers, turn their bleak financial situations around. It’s a tough job and it takes tough decisions, and maybe it takes a tough guy like Bob Nardelli to make them. But still I wonder: How much more buy-in would you get from workers if you instituted a policy like “forced vacation” in a way that made it easy for them get on board instead of cramming it down their throats?
That’s too bad, because I think it is what a company like Chrysler needs to get workers on board and behind the tough management decisions that surely lie ahead. It takes a deft and subtle management touch at the top to pull that off. Unfortunately, deft and subtle are decidedly not Bob Nardelli’s strong suit.
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