And The Biggest Coward Ever At Us Airways Is...
- Thread starter NYPD
- Start date
AgentOrange
Member
- Apr 19, 2004
- 31
- 0
You guys are great. Half of you want him out, the other half says he's a coward for leaving.
Try to find a competent manager who could be attracted to the job of dealing with irrational unions (who would rather take high salaries ending in a year rather than lower salaries into perpetuity) for a rate of pay that the unions WOULD NOT complain about and use to deride him.
It isn't very easy and the Board shouldn't spend time trying to find someone on the cheap- it isn't worth the risk of finding an incapable manager.
You don't like that a CEO can get a multimillion pay package? Move to Europe or get an MBA and do it yourself. This is American capitalism you should complain about, not Mr. Siegel. Mr. Siegel's decisions have a far greater impact than the $4.5m pay he may get. His ratio of pay to impact is far smaller than that of a pilot, mechanic, or anyone else.
Fact is, if Siegel were clairvoyant and saw the need for greater cuts, the unions would have been far more intransigent and would have blamed him for something else (and a healthy faction is doing that now)- not placing blame on management for its own phantom mistakes.
Try to find a competent manager who could be attracted to the job of dealing with irrational unions (who would rather take high salaries ending in a year rather than lower salaries into perpetuity) for a rate of pay that the unions WOULD NOT complain about and use to deride him.
It isn't very easy and the Board shouldn't spend time trying to find someone on the cheap- it isn't worth the risk of finding an incapable manager.
You don't like that a CEO can get a multimillion pay package? Move to Europe or get an MBA and do it yourself. This is American capitalism you should complain about, not Mr. Siegel. Mr. Siegel's decisions have a far greater impact than the $4.5m pay he may get. His ratio of pay to impact is far smaller than that of a pilot, mechanic, or anyone else.
Fact is, if Siegel were clairvoyant and saw the need for greater cuts, the unions would have been far more intransigent and would have blamed him for something else (and a healthy faction is doing that now)- not placing blame on management for its own phantom mistakes.
AgentOrange
Member
- Apr 19, 2004
- 31
- 0
Well, I'd love to say, BoeingBoy, you are absolutely right, you made a great point. But you'd have to list some of those facts, otherwise there isn't much of a chance I could just buy into the confidence of your prose at face value.
BoeingBoy
Veteran
- Nov 9, 2003
- 16,512
- 5,865
- Banned
- #10
AgentOrange,
"who would rather take high salaries ending in a year rather than lower salaries into perpetuity"
Fact: Concession #1 & #2 plus pilots' pension - the "high salaries" ended a while ago. As has been posted repeatedly, most employees pay rate is below that of most other airlines.
"not placing blame on management for its own phantom mistakes"
This ties into your question in another thread - what did Siegel do wrong? The list is too long to go into here - there have been threads devoted to it. Suffice it to say that Unisys calculated that Southwest could have flown our pre-9/11 seat miles for $1.5 billion less in labor cost than we did. Add up the pre-bankruptcy layoffs, concessions during bankruptcy, and savings from terminating the pilots' pension plan and the employees have covered that difference.
Unisys also calculated that Southwest would have spent $1.7 billion less in NON-LABOR costs to fly those same seat miles. Siegel achieved about 1/2 that in savings - leaving the other 1/2 ($800 million) intact. Now, where would we be today if he had attacked the non-labor side as fervently as he attacked the employees? $800 million a year would make our 2003 annual report read a lot differently, wouldn't it?
Jim
"who would rather take high salaries ending in a year rather than lower salaries into perpetuity"
Fact: Concession #1 & #2 plus pilots' pension - the "high salaries" ended a while ago. As has been posted repeatedly, most employees pay rate is below that of most other airlines.
"not placing blame on management for its own phantom mistakes"
This ties into your question in another thread - what did Siegel do wrong? The list is too long to go into here - there have been threads devoted to it. Suffice it to say that Unisys calculated that Southwest could have flown our pre-9/11 seat miles for $1.5 billion less in labor cost than we did. Add up the pre-bankruptcy layoffs, concessions during bankruptcy, and savings from terminating the pilots' pension plan and the employees have covered that difference.
Unisys also calculated that Southwest would have spent $1.7 billion less in NON-LABOR costs to fly those same seat miles. Siegel achieved about 1/2 that in savings - leaving the other 1/2 ($800 million) intact. Now, where would we be today if he had attacked the non-labor side as fervently as he attacked the employees? $800 million a year would make our 2003 annual report read a lot differently, wouldn't it?
Jim
ClueByFour
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 3,566
- 37
Complete lack of any operational acuman. Witness PHL.AgentOrange said:
Complete failure in the strategic planning department (by failing to anticipate "LCCs" during the Chapter 11 process). It's not like Southwest and Jetblue materialized in the year since US submitted it's POR
.
