Can''t We File Bankruptcy Also?

[Bob Owens]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 440 PM KCFlyer wrote:

Naw RV4 - do whatever you like - it's a free country. You'll be screwing yourself worse than any of us. I will be sure to urge my congressman to vote NO should they ask for taxpayers to bail out the airline industry because of a mass walkout.
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[/blockquote]

And you can drive wherever you need to go.

 

[410OhOne]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 4:23:33 PM RV4 wrote:

Isn't it interesting that the folks on this baord trying to scare us about any collective actions are non-union employees?

It is also interesting that certain questions are never answered by these folks.

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[/blockquote]

410OhOne is a monthly due paying member to your socialistic club. And would be glad to answer any and all questions regarding his opinion of this conspiracy, and if it is not a conspiracy than call at a political agenda.

 

[NewHampshire Black Bears]

RV4(dave)
There is(probably) NOBODY on this thread MORE different than you and me.

Yankee vs "Okie"
DEM vs GOP
AFL/CIO vs non industrial union

The list goes on and on.

BUT,

I'd be the FIRST one to join you, SIDE BY SIDE !!!!!!!!

"frig" em' ALL.

I guess being born, in the shadow of the BOS "tea party", has something to do with my confrontational ATTITUDE !!!!!!

NH/BB's

 

[Cart Pusher]

You all go ahead and strike until the cows come home. The employees at my carrier (Alaska) are all pretty happy, not having suffered any furloughs or paycuts since 9/11. In fact, we've succesfully renegotiated two contracts since then. If you check around, I think you'll find that Southwest employees probably wouldn't join in this strike either. In fact, you would probably find yourself striking all alone, or with the other two bankrupt carriers. In any case, those of us working at the other carriers, the solvent ones, will most likely be working towards making our airlines competitive in this new environment so that we don't end up in your position.

 

[RV4]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 6:40:25 PM Cart Pusher wrote:

You all go ahead and strike until the cows come home. The employees at my carrier (Alaska) are all pretty happy, not having suffered any furloughs or paycuts since 9/11. In fact, we've succesfully renegotiated two contracts since then. If you check around, I think you'll find that Southwest employees probably wouldn't join in this strike either. In fact, you would probably find yourself striking all alone, or with the other two bankrupt carriers. In any case, those of us working at the other carriers, the solvent ones, will most likely be working towards making our airlines competitive in this new environment so that we don't end up in your position.
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[/blockquote]

Wiat for Forced Nationalization of the Airline Industry and see where you end up then.

 

[Bob Owens]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 6:40:25 PM Cart Pusher wrote:

You all go ahead and strike until the cows come home. The employees at my carrier (Alaska) are all pretty happy, not having suffered any furloughs or paycuts since 9/11. In fact, we've succesfully renegotiated two contracts since then. If you check around, I think you'll find that Southwest employees probably wouldn't join in this strike either. In fact, you would probably find yourself striking all alone, or with the other two bankrupt carriers. In any case, those of us working at the other carriers, the solvent ones, will most likely be working towards making our airlines competitive in this new environment so that we don't end up in your position.
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[/blockquote]
Ok so you can take care of 10% of the market. What about the other 90%?

 

[RV4]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 952 PM Bob Owens wrote:

"Second, why can't ALL unions and members use the Bankruptcy Judge in this case also to relieve ourselves of any monetrary penalties?"

Unfortuneately this strategy has been eliminated after Dubya signed a bill that restricted our (Working class and poor) from using bankruptcy, even in the case of overwhelming medical bills. But its still ok for corporations with billions in assetts and cash to use it to get out of unfavorable terms. Its good to be the King!!

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[/blockquote]

Bob, do you have the number of that bill and party vote break down?

 

[Diesel8]

Forced nationalization will give us Amtrak of the skies, broke or in this case, broker (sic)!

The weak sink, the strong survive! If only the feds would remember that and let the chips fall where they may, but alas, the have already let the cat out of the bag.

Still, it may be what a few CEO's are hoping for, although I sincerely doubt it will happen. Further, it would cause some issues with the EU, they are trying to abolish any kind of national funding of the airlines.

( Before anyone starts ranting and raving about EU, vis-a-vis Iraq, just remember, there are more countries in the EU than France and Germany. Apart from a few "objectors", most do support the US.)

 

[Bob Owens]

"Second, why can't ALL unions and members use the Bankruptcy Judge in this case also to relieve ourselves of any monetrary penalties?"

Unfortuneately this strategy has been eliminated after Dubya signed a bill that restricted our (Working class and poor) from using bankruptcy, even in the case of overwhelming medical bills. But its still ok for corporations with billions in assetts and cash to use it to get out of unfavorable terms. Its good to be the King!!

 

[Cart Pusher]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 9:16:16 PM Bob Owens wrote:

Ok so you can take care of 10% of the market. What about the other 90%?

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[/blockquote]

Not my problem really.

My point is that you all want to go on strike against the airlines and the government because now your livelihood is at stake, and you talk about it being a united (no pun intended) effort amongst all airline employees, well you can most likely count out those employees that are happy which would include Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, Air Tran. Instead of trying to fight everyone on your way down, why not come together and try to keep from going down. What a sorry group.

 

[RV4]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 10:54:06 PM Cart Pusher wrote:

Not my problem really.

My point is that you all want to go on strike against the airlines and the government because now your livelihood is at stake, and you talk about it being a united (no pun intended) effort amongst all airline employees, well you can most likely count out those employees that are happy which would include Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, Air Tran. Instead of trying to fight everyone on your way down, why not come together and try to keep from going down. What a sorry group.

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[/blockquote]

This could be your problem. If all the majors get concessions, your next. You can act as though nothing will change at your airline, but you are wrong. Your airline may be in a competetive position today, but if these concessions go through, your management will be screaming for the same next.

There is NO vaccine to stop greed.

 

[410OhOne]

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[/blockquote]

Not my problem really.

My point is that you all want to go on strike against the airlines and the government because now your livelihood is at stake, and you talk about it being a united (no pun intended) effort amongst all airline employees, well you can most likely count out those employees that are happy which would include Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, Air Tran. Instead of trying to fight everyone on your way down, why not come together and try to keep from going down. What a sorry group.

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[/blockquote]

Ok Pusher here it is plain and simple;

1. Our management today, "We must have concessions to compete with the low cost carriers (thats you) to stay alive!"

2. Your management tommorrow, "We must have concessions to compete with these newly structured low cost major carriers (thats us) to stay alive!"

Little more clearer now?

 

[Bob Owens]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 10:54:06 PM Cart Pusher wrote:

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 9:16:16 PM Bob Owens wrote:

Ok so you can take care of 10% of the market. What about the other 90%?

----------------
[/blockquote]

Not my problem really.

My point is that you all want to go on strike against the airlines and the government because now your livelihood is at stake, and you talk about it being a united (no pun intended) effort amongst all airline employees, well you can most likely count out those employees that are happy which would include Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Jet Blue, Air Tran. Instead of trying to fight everyone on your way down, why not come together and try to keep from going down. What a sorry group.

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[/blockquote]

Ok Pollyanna tell us how it works.How do we keep the airlines from giving away thier product? Or should we accept cuts so that they can lower the price even more and come back for more concessions?

 

[Bob Owens]

[blockquote]
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On 3/11/2003 9:54:08 PM Diesel8 wrote:

Forced nationalization will give us Amtrak of the skies, broke or in this case, broker (sic)!

The weak sink, the strong survive! If only the feds would remember that and let the chips fall where they may, but alas, the have already let the cat out of the bag.

Still, it may be what a few CEO's are hoping for, although I sincerely doubt it will happen. Further, it would cause some issues with the EU, they are trying to abolish any kind of national funding of the airlines.

( Before anyone starts ranting and raving about EU, vis-a-vis Iraq, just remember, there are more countries in the EU than France and Germany. Apart from a few "objectors", most do support the US.)
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[/blockquote]
Let the chips fall where they may or let the Ships fall where they may? Look to history my friend and you will see that what we are seeing now has happened before. The Railroads were once as suicidally competitive as the airlines are today. The result of a completely unregulated or in other words "lawless" industry was a high rate of failures including Bank failures that were heavily tied to the Railroads and a high accident rate. That is the one of dark sides of pure competition. Another Dark side is that the object of competition is that eventually a victor arises, in other words a monopoly, the spoils of which is to be able to charge whatever the market can possibly bear, good for the monopolists but not the rest of society. While in theory these things should be self-correcting, the reality that was exposed by the trusts of the gilded age was that government interference was necessary to break the lock that the trusts had on markets. Pure free market theorists are just as out of touch with economic reality as communists.
Nationalization of the airlines is not what we should seek; however 26 cents of every dollar that the airlines get for their tickets goes to the government. So its not government subsidies we should seek but temporary relief. The government, which is supposed to protect the people conducted policies in somebody’s “interestsâ€￾, not mine, that brought us to the attention of nut jobs like Osama Bin Laden. Our allies, the Saudis, financed these nut jobs with petro dollars that were used to murder 3000 of our fellow citizens (some ally) and now the government has decided to impose costly changes upon the industry at a time when the industry can least afford it. The deficiencies that they seek to correct were discovered back when the industry was making tons of money but the government decided then that correcting them then, during record profitability, would be too costly, so instead they want the airlines to do it now. The government mandated it, they should pay for it, instead, they are helping the airlines to force its workers to pay for it. We had nothing to do with what happened yet we are being expected to pay for it, we certainly did not benifit from this. The oil companies are the primary benificiaries of our middle east policy, and they have benifited from all the crap that has and is going on over there as we see gasoline go up to two dollars a gallon. The government could have slapped a surcharge on fuel to pay for it, (and mandated that the fuel companies could not pass on the costs to the airlines but instead they went after us, the workers) after all the fuel companies are making out like bandits since all this crap started, I guess that’s the perk of having an oil man as President and VP. The point is that this has been declared an "essential" industry. If it’s so essential that the government reserves the right to deny workers in this industry the right to withhold their labor from a private company isn’t it a little hypocritical to allow the same company to go out of business due to government imposed expenses?

 

[RV4]

Looks like Bob and I have many agreements.

I think if we could stay away from politics, we could co-exist in an effort to save our profession and industry.

Too bad the industrial unions cannot take a lesson from such debate and apply it within their own memberships for unity.

I wont make mention of who was in the White House and controlled Congress when deregulation of the Airline Industry passed, because it is fact that BOTH political parties are sell outs when it comes to the working man.

I'm looking forward to the day Bob and I unite further on the same battle field.