<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">DELTA’S NEW STRATEGY: ‘WARM AND FUZZY’ ALL OVER

This past October, Delta Air Lines CEO Leo Mullin proudly announced a new direction for his beleaguered airline, entitled “A Winning Strategy.” In an interview with the Atlanta media, Mullin was quoted as saying, “We have a winning organization. You (the employees) are going to have a future here.” Shortly after that comment, Mullin jumped ship with a $16 million pension for his six years and eight months on the job. Call me picky, but maybe he should have told us that “A Winning Strategy” included him being the big winner and leaving the employees to deal with the future.

I seem to recall a compensation plan put together by Delta’s board of directors this past March that gave Mullin and 32 other executives some $43 million of bonuses and bankruptcy-proof pensions to “keep the Delta management team together.” Good idea, except the leader of the Delta team has bailed out less than a year after the plan was implemented. And business nabobs wonder why we don’t trust them any farther than we can throw them and their big fat stock options?

Now comes the hocus-pocus. The new CEO, Gerald Grinstein, has the media hyperventilating over his “people skills” and breathlessly reporting his visits to Delta workrooms to cozy up to employees. Is this the same Gerald Grinstein who, as chairman of Delta’s board of directors, approved the untimely and obscene executive compensation package? If you haven’t been around public companies, let me give you a helpful clue: Executives can’t do squat without the approval of their board of directors. Therefore, the Delta board is Villain Number One in the debacle that has severely wounded the airline’s credibility and employee morale along with it. If the Delta employee body buys into Grinstein’s warm and fuzzy approach without demanding some straight answers to some tough questions, shame on them all. For example, Mr. Grinstein, why did you and the board approve that ungodly compensation plan? And, Mr. Grinstein, do you understand that you are the guy who helped get us in this mess?</font>