Whatever happened to the notion of shared sacrifice, of workers and management both sharing in the pain and hardship it takes to get a money-losing business back on track? Well, the concept is a good one, but at Northwest Airlines, it seems to be at the core of all that is wrong with the business right now.

Northwest has been canceling flights at a pretty good clip—more than 1,000 in the past week. The ongoing bad weather in the middle of the country is partly to blame, but the main culprit is a coordinated move by Northwest’s pilots to only fly the 90 hours per month required under their labor contract with the airline. Generally, pilots fly more—the FAA allows 100 hours—but the pilots at Northwest have decided to stick to the letter of the contract and do only what they are contractually obligated to do and not any more.

The pilots, who took about a big pay cut in their last contract and saw hundreds of their fellow pilots furloughed, are upset that Northwest executives received large bonuses when the airline finally came out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy this spring. Last week, they passed a resolution expressing "no confidence" in Northwest management. Pilots at other airlines, notably United and American, are equally upset with management, and it’s possible the problems at Northwest are just the beginning for summer travelers.

Contrast the Northwest battle with what happened at Delta Air Lines when it came out of bankruptcy in March. As I noted at the time in this blog (‘The Art of Management Spin and Positioning," March 8), Delta management gave numerous pay raises and stock when it emerged from bankruptcy to reward rank-and-file workers for their efforts in helping to get the carrier back on track.

Delta CEO Gerald Grinstein understood, as all managers should, that workers are more than willing to sacrifice for the good of the company as long as they are recognized for that sacrifice and see some payback when things get better. Delta management gets this. Northwest clearly doesn’t.

In addition, Northwest’s management doesn’t seem to care about its best customers either. Get a load of this post by a Northwest frequent flier on the Detroit Free Press Web site:

"My wife flew NWA to Phoenix and was to return home two days ago. She has been stuck in a flea-bag hotel for the past two days near the PHX airport because of a pilot shortage, and may finally be able to get home sometime today. She is Platinum Elite with NWA and flies many, many miles a year for business. Now we must re-assess her relationship with Northwest. What would you do? Can anyone afford to be stuck someplace for days at a time? She will be looking for other carriers in the future. I hate to say this, but NWA is a major employer in the Detroit area … and they are shooting themselves in the foot with this foolishness. If they go bust, they deserve it, but it will cost the area lots of jobs."

Have a comment on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say. Until we get the comment posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as many of them as I can.