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On 3/18/2003 9:08:42 PM FWAAA wrote:
Keep grasping at straws - anything to avoid facing reality.
In any event, unless AA cuts their costs by at least another $1.8 billion annually, no federally guaranteed loan application will be approved.
Face it - you (not you personally, but all 100,000 of you) make more money than your employer can afford.
The whole world knows it - will AA's unions admit it?
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Your ignorance is only overshadowed by how oblivious you are to what is going on here.
The government is considering giving aid to the airlines so they can pay for fuel, which has recently DOUBLED in price. So our government will take taxpayer dollars and put them, by way of the airlines, into oilmen’s pockets.
However the same government has made it clear that it will not give aid to the airlines if that aid ends up in the pockets of airline workers. They have made it clear that the airlines must lower wages. Why doesn’t the government take steps to reduce the price of fuel instead of letting these Robber Barons cash in on current geopolitical instability? Could it be because both our Pres and VP are oilmen? Why is it OK for our tax dollars to go into the pockets of the rich who are exploiting the war but not to the workers who have legally established terms and rates? We are being pressured into abandoning our agreements so that the airlines can make a profit and people can fly cheap. No such act of social altruism is being requested of the oil companies. Their patriotism is not being questioned as they raise the price of fuel at a time when our economy can least afford it. Why is it OK for them to act in their best interests,in other words Profiteering off the blood of our friends, neighbors and children that are over in the Middle east, but we are wrong to expect that our contracts that established fair rates of pay be honored?
Shortly after Bush came into office he said that he would not allow any strike by airline workers that affect any hub. Yet he has made it clear that he will allow any airline to liquidate that does not lower its (labor) costs. The administration has made it clear that they will push to control labor costs in order to provide cheap reliable transportation to the public and an ROI to the airlines investors (Bonilla-IRRA Conference Washington DC 2001) however no such governmental pressure is being applied to the other major players in the industry. So we are faced with a situation where our own government is conspiring to defraud us of our wages. With this mandate the other players in the industry are free to continue to raise prices, like the oil companies have, and have the courts pressure us into lowering our wages to make up for it.
Can you see the inconsistency and differential treatment yet?
To say that labor costs are unreasonable then to say that fuel costs are not is hypocritical. Both are what the market dictated at the time when the terms were entered into. It’s called a contract, and if contracts are no longer enforceable then we are heading towards lawlessness. If that’s the way we are going then we either take what steps are necessary to defend our interests or we are victimized. That’s why I say if the judge voids any of the UAL agreements WE SHOULD ALL WALK OUT!!!!
As the current administration works feverishly to reduce our wages they are also working just as hard to reduce taxes on the rich. Well if they pay less tax, and we make less, and therefore pay less tax, who is going to pay for the War?
