Middle management: the buffer between the haves and have nots

Middle management: the buffer between the haves and have nots

Bosses were unveiling a revamped restructuring plan after pilots rejected an earlier proposal to work longer hours. But the board meeting was cut short when hundreds of striking workers stormed into the airline's headquarters in Roissy, outside Paris.

Struggling to regain its financial footing after a crippling two-week pilots’ strike last year, Air France-KLM said on Thursday that it would reduce planned investments in new aircraft and services by more than $680 million over the next two years and would accelerate a cost-cutting drive in the face of stiff competition. The moves come as the French-Dutch airline group swung to an operating loss of 129 million euros, or about $147 million, for 2014, in contrast to a profit of €130 million a year earlier.

Speaking in Paris, Mr. Gagey said no additional staff reductions were planned at Air France this year beyond the 800 announced on Thursday. However, he would not rule out further voluntary departure programs in 2016 or 2017, which he said could eventually include some pilots.

Income inequality leads to one thing: Violence. Whether that violence is mental or physical it is still violence. Air France, in recent weeks has been rumored to be planning downsizing jobs. Those plans are now out in the open as Air France execs announced today that they would be laying off 2,900 staff. That news did not go so well:A human resources manager and an executive had their shirts torn from their bodies and needed to be escorted out of the work site. The human resources manager had to climb a fence. This is all after months of unrest for the airline company. To contextualize the pilot strike referred to above, that was the result of Air France trying to get its pilots to fly an additional 100 hours a year—for free. And this from February:CEOs and middle management—regardless of how the union is being portrayed in most media outlets, the facts are this—if you lie to your workers and then take away their livelihood they may get angry. According to Bloomberg Air France Chairman and CEO Alexandre Begougne de Juniac made only €645,000 ($721,000 US). That's pigeon food compared to some of our American counterparts.

Violence is not the answer but remember this: the British didn't care about Mahatma Gandhi's hunger strike for Mahatma Gandhi, they cared about what the rest of the Indians in the country of India would do if anything happened to Mahatma Gandhi.

Watch the news footage below the fold. It's a lot more intense than a single image could capture.