Commentary –

Ignoring Hallowed Role Models

By William A. Collins

Equal wealth,

Is not divine;

You grab yours,

And I’ll grab mine.

Those who lead exemplary lives tend to become saints, not role models. Look at Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. How many in your set are into sackcloth?

Well, the same phenomenon laps over into corporations. Take airlines. Our family just bought a ticket for our son to fly home from Oregon to Bradley for only $207. Round trip! Sure, a lot of that price has to do with September 11, but the biggest part has to do with Southwest Airlines. Since Southwest moved into Hartford a couple years ago, even we snobs in Fairfield County have been checking the fares. Plus Bradley lets us avoid the Van Wyck Expressway.

And now, Southwest has become a startling example of humane corporate behavior, as well as low fares, far beyond mere good business practice and competitiveness. Believe it or not, in spite of a 22 percent plunge in passenger miles since September 11, it has refused to lay off anyone.  Indeed it has never laid anyone off in its 30-year history. One fruit of this employee husbandry is that many of its workers are volunteering time to the company for free. That’s about as common as fasting for peace.

Now, are you ready for this one? Southwest’s top executives are not accepting any salary for the last three months of the year. That will help keep the line afloat until riders return. It also gives a dramatic boost to worker morale. Of course the company will probably get drummed out of the Chamber of Commerce.

The contrast with the other airlines serving our state is dramatic. Industry leaders are all laying off workers lickety-split, with some even trying to avoid severance pay. Needless to say, their executives are not volunteering for any salary cuts.

What they are volunteering for is federal bailout money. Congress has put up about $100 billion already, no strings attached. And as other industries now line up their own claims, that price tag will probably double, depending on each sector’s political clout. But so far there is no pressure by our lawmakers to substitute loans for grants, or to demand stock options in case the carriers become solvent again. Such terms were all part of the old Chrysler bailout.

United, above all, is pressing its luck. As most lines defer their orders for new planes, fighting to stave off bankruptcy, United is pressing ahead with an order for luxury executive jets from France.

Of course looking out for oneself in bad times began long before September 11. The numbers are now in for dreary 2000, and chief executives won big that year too. Among corporations that laid off more than 1,000 workers, the average CEO hike in salary and benefits was 20 percent. Blue-collar workers got three percent, and white-collar workers, four.

Not surprisingly this treatment adds to America’s storied disparity of income, about which we read so much and do so little. And Connecticut, not by chance, is the poster child for disparity. Let’s look at the mostly booming period from 1991-98. Lumping our 30 richest zip codes together, the average income per person rose from $47,000 to $103,000. The 30 poorest codes rose from $12,000 to $13,000. The richest single zip code (Greens Farms in Westport) went from $80,000 to $281,000. The poorest, in Hartford, from $9,000 down to $8,000.

Gandhi would not be amused. He has not succeeded as a role model. Neither has Southwest Airlines. We may be pleased as punch that it serves Connecticut and brings low fares, but our local corporations have not taken it on as an exemplar. Sharing the wealth may have been the model for the first Thanksgiving, but self-interest is the model for this one.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)