Word: spinetta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Jean-Cyrill Spinetta recalls the dark days of 1997 when he took command of financially strapped Air France, charged with pulling the airline out of a tailspin of labor unrest and a half-decade of losses. A growing number of French customers, long accustomed to work stoppages, viewed the airline with distrust and scorn. "When people start looking at their own flag carrier as unreliable, you've really got a problem," says Spinetta...
...Spinetta recognized an inflection point. "It was vital we let employees see how this opening of markets and increased competition imposing all the changes they were resisting also provided enormous opportunities for us all," he says. "It was the moment to really start working together." To do that, Spinetta wrought a minor miracle: finding the elusive "third way" between the protective, paternalist policies of welfare-state systems and the dog-eat-dog free-market approaches of U.S. and British firms that send French workers running to the barricades. Spinetta managed that with a mix of wage restrictions in exchange...
...feel involved in the airline's management (staff opinions are sought on cabin uniforms from Christian Lacroix), and he struck labor agreements that would leave American managers gobsmacked. "We found a right balance of effort and reward, of commitment to plan and profit sharing via salaries and benefits," Spinetta explains. "Since then, the success of the company has depended on employees understanding our strategy, getting fully behind it and feeling secure knowing that if it all works out, profits from it will be redistributed to them." It's also allowing Spinetta to continue a program to reduce costs...
...Spinetta was well positioned to handle the labor battle. A career civil servant as opposed to a market-hardened manager, he joined the transport ministry in 1988. He was picked to head the state-owned domestic airline Air Inter in 1990. It was fully merged into Air France in 1997, when Spinetta was tapped to run the whole airline. He immediately appealed to employees to become partners in the company. "If we're all still here today, it's because Spinetta convinced workers that he was serious about negotiating and that the sacrifices we had to make were just," says...
...French railways. The high-speed TGV train can now do the 660-km trip in just three hours, about the same as flying if you include early check-in times and travel to the airport, and has been offering one-way fares as low as €38. Jean-Cyril Spinetta, the chairman of Air France, says that airport taxes on that route alone come to €51, so there's no way airlines can compete on price. "Is it legitimate that this can happen?" Spinetta asks, pointing out that the French national railway continues to receive huge subsidies - while European...