Northwest Apologizes for `Insensitive’ Money-Saving Tips for Workers

DETROIT _ Imagine that you expect to be laid off next month and you’re fretting about how you’ll make ends meet.

Then your employer hands you a list of money-saving tips like pulling items out of the trash and taking shorter showers.

That was the case at Northwest Airlines for about a week.

Northwest has apologized for and pulled from company literature a list titled “101 Ways To Save Money,” after outraged workers called some of its suggestions insulting and condescending.

The tips comprised two pages of a 165-page booklet given to 60 ground workers who face layoffs in Bismarck, N.D.; Bozeman, Mont.; and Austin, Texas.

The tips angered many more Northwest workers, who have taken steep pay and benefit cuts, and saw the list on the company’s employee Web site.

“It was very callous,” said Bobby De Pace, president of the Northwest arm of the International Association of Machinists, which represents the ground workers who received the booklet. “All the employees made these tremendous sacrifices and they come out with condescending material like this.”

The information was removed from the company’s internal site on Monday, about a week after it was posted.

“Regrettably, this list, which included some insensitive material, was inadvertently published without being reviewed by Northwest management,” the company said in a statement.

Northwest’s senior vice president of ground operations Crystal Knotek said in the statement that the company would make sure that “all materials are properly reviewed in the future.”

The booklet also included information about pension benefits and how to get jobs in other locations, said Northwest spokesman Roman Blahoski.

The list was provided to Northwest from a third-party vendor, Waukesha, Wis.-based NEAS, an employee assistance firm that has worked with Northwest, KLM, GMAC Mortgage and Jockey, according to its Web site.

A spokeswoman for the company said she wouldn’t comment on the list.

Blahoski declined to comment on whether Northwest plans to continue working with NEAS.

The booklets were the initial part of the process of outsourcing the jobs of ramp workers and gate and ticket agents at 69 smaller airports that handle 50 or fewer Northwest flights a week. Considering the pending lay offs, Stephen Gordon, president of the ground workers local in Romulus, described the booklet’s tips as “a final smack in the face before you leave the company.”

“Tell me I’m getting financial advice from Bill Gates,” he said. “It might be a little more credible.”

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The following tips, given to 60 Northwest Airlines workers facing lay offs and posted on the company’s employee Web site early last week, outraged workers, prompting Northwest to pull the material and apologize for giving it out.

_Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash.

_Move to a less expensive place to live.

_Ask your doctor for samples of prescriptions.

_Use old newspapers for cat litter.

_Buy spare parts for your car at the junkyard.

_Search the Internet for freebies.

_Never go grocery (shopping) hungry.

_Take a date for a walk along the beach or in the woods.

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