Just Another Day In The Class War

[airlineorphan]

[Originally, I was going to post this in the Dave for $1 thread, but someone started naming names and then the topic got shut down.... Nonetheless, I have a point I want to make on some of what ITRADE and exagony said in that thread. Moderators, please indulge this discussion as long as it doesn't descend to the depths of the previous and now locked thread. It gets to the heart of some of the debates that have been swirling over the last couple of years. - Airlineorphan]


ITRADE sez:

Yup, here we go again with the class warfare argument.

You can pretend that class warfare is not an ever present fact of life in a class society, but then you could also pretend that gravity doesn't exist either.

The problem is only one class seems to be fighting a class war, and that's Mr. Siegel's class. Then when the rest of us schmoes who actually do the work around here look up and say "Hey, stop poking me with a sharp stick!" Siegel's class and those who wish they were in his class starting hopping up and down yelling "You started it! You said `class'!" (Depending upon your generation, you may now have an image of Bevis and Butthead snickering to each other....)

ITRADE, it is a class war. That's just the way capitalism works. If you are a fan of capitalism, then you'll just have to deal with that fact. And you'll have to deal with the fact that it's not a system that can accomodate absolute social mobility. You'll also have to deal with the fact that sometimes those of us who aren't in the Boss' class will occasionally wake up and take note of what is being done to us and even (gasp!) fight back!

PITbull and I both have options (which we have both availed ourselves of) to improve ourselves and our position through education, etc, but we also have availed ourselves of the opportunity to improve ourselves and our sisters and brothers through collective action and solidarity. We know which side of the fence we are on in the actually existing class war. Education and self-improvement on the basis of which you propose will not make us CEO's of large corporations, nor would either of us want to be in the Boss' class if it could.

Take a little time out to read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle sometime if you really want to get a good dose of class war.

Have a great day in the class war!
-Airlineorphan

 

[AOG-N-IT]

Orphan,

Thank You for re-starting this thread... I was in the middle of a very long tyraid of my own...but got slammed by the "Thread Locked" thing ...and Im not the least bit happy over that...after the effort and thought put into it.

Here's the abridged version....after my anger has cooled.

I do not think Dave offering to take a dollar or even a dime a year would change the momentum (Negative) that he's created here.

As we know...Dave came to us with positive talk of making needed changes to regain this airlines footing. He said it was going to hurt...and it did in a big way!!

With great reluctance ...Dave got his desired Concessions from every work group and MSP position on the property. We were mis-lead to believe that this was what it was going to take to right this sinking ship. Oh how wrong was that??!!!

Concessions lapsed into more. We not only took our hits on wages and benefits...we got slammed for 5% more...the Pilots lost thier retirement funding they were promised...We have shuddered stations , Expressed Stations...and now we are looking at sub-standard heavy maintenance being threatened against us...and our passengers and crews. Where was this ever represented or implied when Dave came to us in the companies hour of need? The awnser is NEVER !!

Dave has completely mis-represented himself to both the Employees and the Loyal Customers of this airline.

The mis-representation to the employee's in painfully obvious..and the lack of quality and cleanliness of our product is evident to many customers whom post here. I see no change in sight on that issue...without some retractions on Dave's part.

What has been lost in the halls of these business schools is this. Integrity and Loyalty.

A leader with Integrity commands and earns respect....and usually this brews into loyalty. Loyal workers create a positive enviroment...a productive force...and then promotes happy and loyal customer response to the service or product provided...the profits follow suit if properly executed , unless someone is taking away from that potential?

I could care less if Dave makes a dollar a year or a Million a year. If the guy was being square business with us about his intent all along, like he promised up front in the city tours...My gripes would be limited at best...but he has been anything but that...and that has killed the drive in thousands here....I guess I have a glimpse of what a cheated upon spouse feels like in the aftermath now. (Getting Screwed then Screwed) (LOL)

What's wrong with the current leadership is the mindset of instant results...without examining the actual functunary problems. It's easier to try to make sweeping changes and impact the immediate bottom line...as opposed to solving problems and re-kindling a degree of loyalty.

We have to many "Guess-timators" in our leadership ranks...and far too few Creative Problem Solvers"...and this is a direct reflection of the "Fly By Night" or Profit and Run leaders that are being cultivated in todays business schools.

Could we imagine what the industrial world of America would be like if people like Henry Ford for example were not there for the long haul , instead of just hitting it big and venturing off to the next potential personal profit maker.

We are in dire need of a leader...from both the Corporate Side...and the Side of Labor Leadership. These parties need to be abale to sit down and solve what's wrong...and agree on the long term mutual goals for success and prolonged profitable staying power....We could not be any farther removed from what I'm speaking of if we tried.

Change is needed here...and it needs to stem from the top down.....Dave had his chance....and lost it between greed and the translation of his initial message to us all. We gave him what he asked for with great reluctance and many reservations...and we have lost thousands of loyal friends along the way...but now he's lost something more than just us...he's lost his credibility with State Officials , Communities...and even some of the formerly loyal people that pay all of our salaries. Dr. Bronner needs to take a hard look at the monster he's impowered before more is lost for good. Time is as big of an enemy to this company as it's leadership is.


I ask my fellow workers to keep "Apathy" out of the picture. Sure we have a beef here...but don't let it affect your duties...that can only be used as ammunition against us...and qualify managements low opinions of what we perfrom well...with or without them.

 

[Dilligas]

Airline Orphan & AOG, thank you for your insightful posts.

I think this quote from Mike Boyd at aviationplanning.com might help to explain what we are experiencing and should be a wake up call to us all:
--------------

"Write this down: the airline industry is evolving into a modular, outsourced production model. The many parts of the production chain will eventually be interchangeable among a range of vendors and suppliers, and it will be the most efficient that will survive. RJ lift.is just one part.

Historically, airlines had tightly-interconnected production chains that were specific to the individual carrier. From CRS systems to reservations, to in-flight service, to maintenance, to accounting, all systems were typically proprietary and internal to the carrier. But the future will be a model consisting of a production chain that's made up of modules that can - and will - be easily pulled out and replaced as necessary to meet economic and market conditions. We've seen it with the retail channels, where airlines have closed their own reservations centers and replaced them seamlessly with outside vendors, including some that are overseas. Maintenance is going in the same direction. Every supplier had best get the message: you're expendable, and in the future, only the strongest and best will survive."

source: www.aviationplanning.com "Hot Flash" September 15, 2003

(Bold highlighted by dilligas for emphasis)
------------------------------------

Can anyone deny this is not what is being done to us? The long term loyal employees are being thrown out for the lowest bidder.

This is why a stand must be taken, and now. There will be no limits to the contracting out and the creation of "virtual airlines", a series of independent contractors, doing YOUR work, and a small group of "managers" to reap the profits.

Kiss your standard of living, your dreams, your career, and your retirement goodbye.

 

[airlineorphan]

Thanks for the comments AOG-N-IT and Dilligas,

The outsourcing, modular airline industry is definitley the direction the industry is going. Some have called it a "Virtual Airline" model, in which a holding company, say US Airways Group, presides over a vast constellation of outsourced, affiliated and subsidiary operations which (theoretically) function in concert, insulating the mothership of US Airways Group from risk. (I've heard capitalism described as a sytem of socializing the risks and costs while privatizing the gains.)

In practice, what you get is a model that parallels the way that Nike makes shoes or Walmart squeezes suppliers who in turn squeeze subcontracted suppliers and so forth. This model of outsourcing was popular with management types in an earlier Robber Baron age and was known as "Sweating." This is where we get the word "Sweatshop" from.

A complex shellgame of contracting and subcontracting does indeed insulate the top dawgs and provides for a very effective means of squeezing more productivity out of workers at lower and lower compensation rates, all the while, allowing the folks in the corner suites at the top of the virtual company the luxury of pretending their hands are clean. "No blood on my hands, I can't be responsible for what the manager at that t-shirt factory in Vietnam or Indonesia is doing to drive their workers harder" becomes "No blood on my hand, I can't be responsible for the practices at S.M.A.R.T. They were subcontracted by Ratheon to do the maintenance for Mesa's Air Midwest subsidiary (division, what have you). It's not our fault an elevator cable was set wrong."

In addition to the ultimate "You get what you pay for" effect of such a Sweatshop/Outsourced/Modular/Virtual Corporation fantasy, you end up treating people like garbage. But hey, once again, the Mothership at the the top/center of this complex shellgame gets to insulate itself from the very class war it is waging against a vast array of working people.

On the other hand, the auto industry discovered that it's modular model of outsourced parts plants and just-in-time production made it acutely vulnerable to strikes and other industrial actions at places like the Dayton brake plant. Hmmmmmm.......

AOG-N-IT, I remember when Siegel came around. I watched the things he said and his history and concluded pretty early on that he should be regarded as a "Frank Lorenzo with a Human Face" Smiling, nodding, expressing great concern, all the while seeking a soft spot to put the knife in everytime he patted an employee on the back for a job-well-done.

He came here to do a job (on us)! And has been rewarded handsomely for meeting his objectives (of beating the snot out of the workforce). It's a class war not of our choosing. But as Caeser said: "Here is the rose and here you must dance." Time for us to do a little tap dance!

-Airlineorphan

 

[wench]

BTW IMO,
Let Davey work for FREE""""' like the rest of us who decided to stay X-press...

I know dont start the lecture that was MY OPINION>>>

Don't say a word.
Seigel WOULD NOT WORK and tolerate the crap we are dealing with...

There I'm done...

Finito.....Ke serra Serra..

 

[Flydrive1]

Here's a column from well-over one year ago about the "umentionable" subject of "class warfare." I hope you find it interesting and/or illuminating.

A Touch of Class
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times

A liberal and a conservative were sitting in a bar. Then Bill Gates walked in. "Hey, we're rich!" shouted the conservative. "The average person in this bar is now worth more than a billion!" "That's silly," replied the liberal. "Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn't make you or me any richer." "Hah!" said the conservative, "I see you're still practicing the discredited politics of class warfare."

Am I caricaturing the debate? Alas, not at all. Whenever anyone points out the systematic tilt of the Bush administration toward the rich, the administration and its defenders immediately raise the cry of "class warfare." Yet when you look at the arguments the administration actually makes on behalf of its policy, they are as silly as that of the conservative in the bar. The difference is that the administration knows exactly what it's doing.

For example: On Saturday, in his weekly radio address, George W. Bush declared that "the tax relief I propose will give 23 million small-business owners an average tax cut of $2,042 this year." That remark is intended to give the impression that the typical small-business owner will get $2,000. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, most small businesses will get a tax break of less than $500; about 5 million of those 23 million small businesses will get no break at all. The average is more than $2,000 only because a small number of very wealthy businessmen will get huge tax cuts.

So the latest round of Bush tax cuts, like the previous round, mainly provides benefits to the very, very well off - and once again the administration is shamelessly misrepresenting the content of its own policies. But aside from the honor and integrity thing, should we care?

There's been a concerted effort to convince us that we shouldn't - that anyone who even pays attention to who gets what must be motivated by envy. Consider a recent cover of Business Week. Under the headline "Class Warfare," it asked: "Suppose Bush's tax plan works: It raises long-term growth, reduces unemployment, boosts workers' wages, and eventually cuts a rising deficit. ... Now suppose the rich get richer, and income inequality gets worse. Time to vote."

As Superman used to say, "What th'?" Does Business Week really think that's the argument - that opponents of the Bush plan agree that it will do great things for the economy, that the increase in inequality it will cause is their only objection? In fact, those who oppose the Bush plan think it will work no better than the 2001 tax cut: that it will do little for growth or employment, and will sharply raise the deficit. (These guys now have a track record, and it's not encouraging. In the year and a half since that tax cut, which was sold as the perfect economic stimulus, the economy has lost 1.4 million jobs.)

Meanwhile, let's look at what the administration isn't doing. It's not allocating enough money to meet its own goals for homeland security, or to provide adequate funding for Medicare. It has scaled back promised pay increases for the military. It's not providing a penny in aid to desperate state governments - it isn't even helping them meet the new burden of homeland security spending mandated from Washington. (Remember those promises, after Sept. 11, of aid to fire departments and police? That was then.)

And bear in mind that the budget deficits of state and local governments are forcing cuts in medical care for the poor and public services for everyone. Many states, even those with Republican governors, will be forced to raise taxes too - but the burden of those increases will fall on the middle class, not the rich.

The only beneficiaries of the latest Bush plan will be those who receive tax cuts big enough to offset all these negatives. Those beneficiaries are the usual suspects - the same small, wealthy minority that got the big benefits from the last tax cut. Does pointing this out constitute class warfare?

The administration and its defenders will, of course, insist that it does - because that charge helps confuse the public about what's really going on. But for the record: When people like me stress how few Americans will gain from the Bush plan, we're not talking about envy; we're talking about priorities.

 

[RowUnderDCA]

Flydrive-

Hear! Hear! Your observation is exactly right. I've always thought that Krugman was on to something in the simple way he is able to explain concepts that Dems can't manage to articulate.

It seems to me that Conservatives look at the economy in units of dollars and cents. Liberals and Progressives look at the economy in units of people and wage-earners and families.

It occurs to me that the constitution was written for citizens. So, who do you think has got it right?

 

[diogenes]

Frequently, when the term 'class warfare' or 'class envy' is used as a pejorative, the implication is only the proletariat is capable of such base emotions. Enron indicates the elite are just as capable of the seven deadly sins as are we lesser mortals.

Let us take a little stroll along Class Warfare Lane.

In the early 1900's, the Keating-Owens Act was the first to regulate child labor. The Supreme Court struck the law down.

Business, with the blessing of the government it pays for, is getting out of the pension business. Small investors, heeding the advice of every expert on the planet, parked their money in mutual funds. Jane Bryant Quinn, Newsweek, Sept 29,2003, on the recent mutual funds scandal. "While most of them (mutual funds) are probably clean, dozens of others earn big bucks through tricks that siphon profits away from trusting small investors."

Over the past 18 months, American productivity has risen at a 5% annual rate; twice that of the post-WWII average. Labor has traditionally shared in such increases with wage improvements or job security. We all know what's happening now - continued pay cuts and layoffs across the economic landscape.

Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao (Republican Mitch McConnell's wife, and why aren't the dittoheads giving her hell about her maiden name, like they did Hillary?)is requesting that unions provide a lot more reports about their activities. The unions have responded it would place a major financial burden on them to comply, to no avail, at this point. Funny, when the media conglomerates, financial institutions, and power companies request this administration for relief from onerous reporting requirements, it's granted.

So yes, class warfare certainly exists. And the working class is taking it in the shorts.

I don't hold the greedheads solely accountable. A large portion of the blame lies within ourselves. In many countries, power is gained and maintained from the barrel of a gun. All we have to do is cast a vote, preferably an informed one. When votes are few, money gains a disproportionate influence.

Sorry for the rant, but this is THE issue that cranks me up.