Dea Certe
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 889
- 0
Do you remember the movie "Wall Street"? It was a fictional story about an airline and a few greedy men.
In the movie, Michael Douglas played the part of a very wealthy, savvy "Business man" who bought an airline to dismantle it and make a profit. His most famous line came while he was defending his actions at a shareholders meeting, "Greed is Good."
Some believe the character was based on Ivan Boesky, a real life Wall Street "abitraguer" who had said to a 1986 graduating class of business majors almost the same the thing. Boesky told them "Greed is all right. I want you to know that. I think Greed is healthy." And they took him at his word.
No longer was it necessary to spend years with a company, moving ones way up the corporate ladder. You could jump in and buy and sell bonds. You could go into Mergers and Acquisitions. Paper transactions that could make one very wealthy, very quick and relatively bloodless. No had to see the real live people in trenches.
Manufactoring companies were traded, acquired, sold and a few people got very rich.
But these people never really knew anything about the day-to-day running of a company or factory. They rarely met any of the people who worked "for them" on the plant floors. All they saw was the bottom line. Which was always higher than they wanted it to be.
So, the Plan was to force costs down. The product wasn't the issue or particularly important. Plants and factories were shut down or moved, usually to the South where the Right to Work Laws made it much more easy to keep costs down.
Labor unions could be broken, profits could soar while the workers lived on less and less. With fewer of those pesky benefits, like insurance and retirement plans. High cost items, you understand. But people need to eat and feed their families, so they had a good supply of "low cost labor".
Eventually, the South, with a lower cost of living already wasn't able to meet those cost cutting requirements. So, they took the factories even farther South to Mexico or to Asia where there were almost no laws to protect the workers. And even more bodies that needed to eat.
NAFTA was the ticket. Cooked up and pulled together during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, NAFTA didn't look to stand a chance of getting off the ground. It was argued and fought over in the Senate. Finally, it was passed with much hoop-la and signed into being by Bill Clinton.
Now, since there's a few "protections" in place for the workers, who were barely making a living wage in their country, it cost more. So jobs are being sent to Asia. "Out-sourcing" has become a way of doing business on the cheap. Because we have to keep the costs down to be "profitable".
It doesn't bother anyone who can't see the people who are living in squalor unlike anything our Country has seen since the early 1900's. Child labor, convict labor are very cheap too.
So, where does that leave us? It's my opinion 9-11 sped up a process that was already in motion. The airline industry was particularly hard hit. In trouble since deregulation, airlines were already fighting each other tooth and nail for market share. 9-11 and the war with Iraq just pushed everyone over the edge. Massive lay offs, years of contracts broken in a few swift months.
Airline travel can't afford to be "glamorous" any more. The product suffers as standards are lowered so fares can be lowered. So we can get a what little profits there might be, or just stay alive while there's "over-capacity" in the market. Seems there's too many airlines and not enough money.
Again, I think we are at a critical stage. The market is slowly coming back. But all the airlines are in so much trouble, it's got to be a "Survivor" scenario. Every airline is fighting every other airline for customers. Some one has to lose. Will it be US or UAL, the two most "troubled" carriers or will there be something else? Spinning off "new low cost units" while pruning back the old?
All the legacy airlines have very senior people who are topped out on pay and many who are close to retirement age. Where do they go in today's economy?
Life isn't fair, we all know this. But what do we do? Try to save what few jobs there are while we hope and pray people will retire. And hope and pray there will be a pension for them. Maybe not much to rave about, but a few dollars to keep body and soul together.
It's beat the clock. We can only dance so fast for so long while waiting to see what happens at the other airlines. As has been pointed out, we don't have much solidarity. That would be our only card to play.
I still believe RJ's aren't the answer. Customers don't like them. The complaints are already rolling in at the carriers who do have them. Check out FlyerTalk. Those are the customers who kept us alive this long.
In any case, the workers at the airlines will be the ones who suffer the most, through job loss and severe pay and benefit cuts. The boys at the top will get their Big Bucks, or at least enough to still be "respectable" in their circles.
What we can do, is write our Senators and Congress Representatives. We can vote. We must vote. We must make our concerns and issues their priorities. Not just the airline workers, but all the people who work for wages in this country.
Out-sourcing must stop. The flow of jobs off-shore must stop. Otherwise, we are creating a permenent under class of low paying, barely life supporting jobs. It isn't about getting or having a good education any more.
We are losing our middle class. Who's going to pay the taxes? Already Bush has given Corporate America huge tax cuts. A few will benefit from that, but only a few. It hurts our country more than it helps as long as we don't have some balances.
I apologise for the length of this post. I have much more to say, but I'm too sick at heart to write it.
Dea
In the movie, Michael Douglas played the part of a very wealthy, savvy "Business man" who bought an airline to dismantle it and make a profit. His most famous line came while he was defending his actions at a shareholders meeting, "Greed is Good."
Some believe the character was based on Ivan Boesky, a real life Wall Street "abitraguer" who had said to a 1986 graduating class of business majors almost the same the thing. Boesky told them "Greed is all right. I want you to know that. I think Greed is healthy." And they took him at his word.
No longer was it necessary to spend years with a company, moving ones way up the corporate ladder. You could jump in and buy and sell bonds. You could go into Mergers and Acquisitions. Paper transactions that could make one very wealthy, very quick and relatively bloodless. No had to see the real live people in trenches.
Manufactoring companies were traded, acquired, sold and a few people got very rich.
But these people never really knew anything about the day-to-day running of a company or factory. They rarely met any of the people who worked "for them" on the plant floors. All they saw was the bottom line. Which was always higher than they wanted it to be.
So, the Plan was to force costs down. The product wasn't the issue or particularly important. Plants and factories were shut down or moved, usually to the South where the Right to Work Laws made it much more easy to keep costs down.
Labor unions could be broken, profits could soar while the workers lived on less and less. With fewer of those pesky benefits, like insurance and retirement plans. High cost items, you understand. But people need to eat and feed their families, so they had a good supply of "low cost labor".
Eventually, the South, with a lower cost of living already wasn't able to meet those cost cutting requirements. So, they took the factories even farther South to Mexico or to Asia where there were almost no laws to protect the workers. And even more bodies that needed to eat.
NAFTA was the ticket. Cooked up and pulled together during the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, NAFTA didn't look to stand a chance of getting off the ground. It was argued and fought over in the Senate. Finally, it was passed with much hoop-la and signed into being by Bill Clinton.
Now, since there's a few "protections" in place for the workers, who were barely making a living wage in their country, it cost more. So jobs are being sent to Asia. "Out-sourcing" has become a way of doing business on the cheap. Because we have to keep the costs down to be "profitable".
It doesn't bother anyone who can't see the people who are living in squalor unlike anything our Country has seen since the early 1900's. Child labor, convict labor are very cheap too.
So, where does that leave us? It's my opinion 9-11 sped up a process that was already in motion. The airline industry was particularly hard hit. In trouble since deregulation, airlines were already fighting each other tooth and nail for market share. 9-11 and the war with Iraq just pushed everyone over the edge. Massive lay offs, years of contracts broken in a few swift months.
Airline travel can't afford to be "glamorous" any more. The product suffers as standards are lowered so fares can be lowered. So we can get a what little profits there might be, or just stay alive while there's "over-capacity" in the market. Seems there's too many airlines and not enough money.
Again, I think we are at a critical stage. The market is slowly coming back. But all the airlines are in so much trouble, it's got to be a "Survivor" scenario. Every airline is fighting every other airline for customers. Some one has to lose. Will it be US or UAL, the two most "troubled" carriers or will there be something else? Spinning off "new low cost units" while pruning back the old?
All the legacy airlines have very senior people who are topped out on pay and many who are close to retirement age. Where do they go in today's economy?
Life isn't fair, we all know this. But what do we do? Try to save what few jobs there are while we hope and pray people will retire. And hope and pray there will be a pension for them. Maybe not much to rave about, but a few dollars to keep body and soul together.
It's beat the clock. We can only dance so fast for so long while waiting to see what happens at the other airlines. As has been pointed out, we don't have much solidarity. That would be our only card to play.
I still believe RJ's aren't the answer. Customers don't like them. The complaints are already rolling in at the carriers who do have them. Check out FlyerTalk. Those are the customers who kept us alive this long.
In any case, the workers at the airlines will be the ones who suffer the most, through job loss and severe pay and benefit cuts. The boys at the top will get their Big Bucks, or at least enough to still be "respectable" in their circles.
What we can do, is write our Senators and Congress Representatives. We can vote. We must vote. We must make our concerns and issues their priorities. Not just the airline workers, but all the people who work for wages in this country.
Out-sourcing must stop. The flow of jobs off-shore must stop. Otherwise, we are creating a permenent under class of low paying, barely life supporting jobs. It isn't about getting or having a good education any more.
We are losing our middle class. Who's going to pay the taxes? Already Bush has given Corporate America huge tax cuts. A few will benefit from that, but only a few. It hurts our country more than it helps as long as we don't have some balances.
I apologise for the length of this post. I have much more to say, but I'm too sick at heart to write it.
Dea
