Merging is Hard
 

ATLANTA, Feb. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Delta Air Lines (DAL) today will pay its employees more than a half-billion dollars in earned profit sharing – the highest payout in company history – in recognition for their industry-leading performance in 2013. Employees' individual payouts will equal 8.26 percent of their eligible 2013 earnings.

"Thank you to Delta's nearly 80,000 people worldwide who made 2013 a banner year for Delta through the strong work ethic and values they demonstrate every day," said Delta CEO Richard Anderson. "This year's profit sharing payment is a reflection of their hard work and of our conviction that if we take care of our employees, they take care of our customers and that enables our shareowners to succeed."

Along with base pay, Delta provides employees with additional compensation elements like profit sharing, designed to allow employees to earn more when the company performs well. Additionally, Delta employees can earn monthly bonuses for meeting corporate operational goals throughout the year, known as Shared Rewards.

In 2013, Delta employees help achieve the corporate financial and operational goals earning $91.7 million in Shared Rewards, which, combined with profit sharing, totals $598 million in bonus performance pay for the year. Delta has paid out nearly $1.7 billion in profit sharing and Shared Rewards during the past four years.

Today, hundreds of employee celebrations are happening at Delta facilities across its global network.

It is interesting how their CEO always references the employees first whereas ours always mentions the shareholders first.

Here's some public math: 100%/12=8.333%

In other words, Delta Employees will get the equivalent of 13 pay periods this year instead of 12. Nice!

Man I would have messed that up.

IIRC, both CEOs are only beholden to their stockholders... maybe one is honest and the other is better....

Or ... maybe one is honest and better and the other is dishonest and bad!

How many times has the business world shown that happy employees make happy shareholders? Just in our industry alone it was only SWA and Kellner that got it ... now it appears the DAL has learned it.

Sadly with our managment ... we'll just manage like a regional airline and shove it to the employees and blame them for their high costs!

Actually, Delta has re-learned it. One of C.E. Woolman's basic tenets was, "Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your customers." There was a reason the "Delta Family" existed and even bought the company a 767. However, Ron Allen destroyed it during 7.5 and the Mullins just urinated all over the corpse.

RA has brought a little bit of that back, which is impressive considering how far gone it was. There's a long way to go and its still up in the air as to how far they want to take it in restoring that culture, for lack of a better airline buzzword.

Its gone from trust to distrust back to trust but verify.

Delta also pays their people on military leave in full….guys gone the whole year are still getting profit sharing checks. Not so at United.