LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s not an unreasonable request to have more transparency among data brokers.”
Jennifer Barrett Glasgow,
Acxiom Corp. chief privacy officer Article, 1D
American seeks to break contracts
DALLAS - American Airlines is asking a bankruptcy judge to break its union contracts and impose cost-cutting terms on workers.
American said it filed the request Tuesday in U.S.
bankruptcy court in New York.
The airline is making good on a threat it made last week to seek to throw out the labor contracts if it couldn’t negotiate concessions from unions for pilots, flight attendants and ground workers.
American plans to cut 13,000 jobs and reduce wages to emerge from bankruptcy with lower costs. The company said its annual labor costs are hundreds of millions of dollars higher than those at rivals such as United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Thomas W. Horton, the chief executive officer of American and parent AMR Corp., said in a letter to employees Tuesday that the company is trying to speed up the bankruptcy reorganization process and avoid the chance that American could be sold or broken up. AMR’s mounting losses and the rising price of oil added to pressure to act quickly, he said.
Horton will continue to negotiate with the unions.
Union officials have charged that American never intended to bargain over cutting costs - that it planned all along to use the bankruptcy process to throw out contracts that they bargained for.
Bankruptcy law lets companies walk away from union contracts if they show that they can’t succeed under those contracts.
Tyson: Closings may affect markets
Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale this week said the closing of three of four ground beef filler plants owned by Beef Products Inc. will possibly disrupt retail beef and livestock markets.
Beef Products Inc., of Dakota Dunes, S.D., on Monday said it indefinitely suspended operations at plants in Waterloo, Iowa; Finney County, Kan.; and Amarillo, Texas, because of backlash over how “lean, finely textured beef” is used as a filler in hamburger, The Associated Press reported. Beef Products is keeping its Dakota Dunes plant open.
Tyson’s Fresh Meats, the meat giant’s Dakota Dunes subsidiary, is Beef Products’ main supplier of beef trimmings used to make the product.
Critics say the ammonia-treated beef scraps are a cheap, low-quality meat filler, The Associated Press reported. Supporters call the meat nutritionally sound.
Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman, in an e-mailed message wrote that the decrease in Beef Products Inc.
output will result in less lean beef available in the market and may result in higher consumer prices. He indicated there may be an increase in the supply of some of the raw materials used to produce ground beef, and this may result in lower values that could ultimately affect livestock prices.
Modifications at Tyson plants are being made, Mickelson wrote.
Business, Pages 28 on 03/28/2012