Judith Hamill
Administrator, Chicago O'Hare Airport
The Effects of Deregulation for Workers in the Airline Industry
JUDITH HAMILL: In 1982 Braniff International Airlines was going out of business, and my father had worked for Braniff, and I happened to be in this government regulation course with Stephen Breyer, who was responsible for the Airline Deregulation Act, and so I took upon myself to do research on what the Airline Deregulation Act said about displacement of people within the industry. And it said that people were supposed to get special benefits and get government subsidies, none of which to my mind was really happening. So I wrote [a paper about airline deregulation and how its impact on labor] in order to say to Professor Breyer, "Look, there are all these jobs in this industry, and really, how has the airline deregulation act addressed that?"
In 1992, when Braniff went into bankruptcy, they had 10,652 employees; all of those employees were out of work. Then you had Eastern, which subsequently went under at 37,277 employees; Pan American had 29,639 employees; and Western had 9,362 employees. All of those people were displaced and most probably left the industry for other jobs.
One of them was my dad. My dad was out of work for a couple of years and then went back with Braniff. My father had been a jet mechanic from 1949 until 1982, and he was an incredible mechanic, but when he came back the second time around with Braniff, his wages were half of what he had earned before -- and he was an experienced worker with incredible skills, and it was very difficult to see that [happen] to him.
To ordinary people like my dad it was just incomprehensible. He'd given his life to an industry, and they changed the rules in the middle of the game, and they didn't even provide for the appropriate compensation at the end that would [help] them to come back in. |
