Millions For Dave
- Thread starter youngblood
- Start date
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youngblood
Senior
- Jan 17, 2004
- 373
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- Thread Starter
- Thread starter
- #17
The facts? You and I know how the media can be. I was simply reiterating what I heard - nothing less nothing more. I was hoping to get a link for the enjoyment of everyone else. Perhaps I can get the name and number of approx fifteen other employees I work with that saw the same thing. (Not to mention those who know someone that heard the same piece of information on their home television.)etops1 said:
I am sorry for not acquiring a link. I failed miserabley in that that aspect, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
OP
youngblood
Senior
- Jan 17, 2004
- 373
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- Thread Starter
- Thread starter
- #18
KDKA evening news, after displaying Dave's typical we must band together speech, graciously added the morsel a his 5 million gain if the company folds.usfliboi said:
OldGuyinPA
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 700
- 8
Piney Bob...
You and I disagree on some on some things...but I vote you in
CEO Of Useless Airways...All we want is dignity and respect and....
a clear direction.....
Dump Dave and his sorry staff of minnions...
You and I disagree on some on some things...but I vote you in
CEO Of Useless Airways...All we want is dignity and respect and....
a clear direction.....
Dump Dave and his sorry staff of minnions...
BoeingBoy
Veteran
- Nov 9, 2003
- 16,512
- 5,865
- Banned
- #23
CEO Is Being Closely Monitored at Ailing US Airways
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mar. 6--Could David Siegel's days be numbered at US Airways?
The airline's chief executive officer is 3 1/2 weeks from being able to walk away from the Arlington, Va.-based carrier for any reason and collect $4.5 million in severance pay. This window, built into his contract during bankruptcy last year, is available for only 30 days, starting April 1.
Siegel maintains he is not going anywhere in April -- at least not voluntarily. "While my contract contains protections should I resign from my position in April, I -- intend to stay and work with the board and our employees to complete our restructuring."
Whether others want Siegel to stick around longer isn't as certain.
His future really is in the hands of US Airways' chairman and largest stockholder David Bronner, who backed his highest-paid employee when the pilots union late last year called for Siegel's ouster . More recently, however, the Alabama state pension fund chief has told people privately that he is reconsidering the management issue as US Airways inches closer to Bronner's summer deadline for a turnaround .
Another potential check on Siegel's future is the pilots union. Although it backed off from its public call for Siegel's resignation, the pilots are using their recent agreement to reenter concessionary talks as leverage to change the "corporate culture" of the nation's seventh-largest airline, implying the removal of the CEO.
Asked about Siegel this week in an interview, Bronner said Siegel's job was safe -- for now. "You can't consider it at this time with the difficulties you are in," he said, adding it would be "foolish on my part to say any more than that." Bronner also made it clear he would be watching Siegel closely and grading him on his performance.
"If he is successful and he wants to stay, you absolutely stay with him forever," he said. "If he is not successful, you have to make a change. No different than any other organization. It is just the real life in the real world we all live in."
Bronner was not Siegel's first choice as savior of US Airways. He had wooed David Bonderman, a wealthy Texas investor who turned around Continental Airlines while Siegel worked there in the 1990s and picked Siegel to lead that airline's Continental Express division.
But after Siegel solicited a $200 million bid from Bonderman's Texas Pacific Group in 2002, Bronner stepped in with a better offer. He also argued that the relationship between Siegel and Bonderman constituted a "sweetheart deal" and cast doubt on whether US Airways could fairly evaluate competing bids.
Siegel, said local airline analyst Bill Lauer, is in an "awkward position of working for a company whose largest shareholders are strangers to the original engagement." Bronner's "definition of success may be very different than what David Bonderman's might have been."
After one of his first meetings with Siegel, in September 2002, Bronner said he was "very impressed -- I think he is very capable of making US Air successful." He let Siegel run the airline without any interference from the top and, according to Bronner, there were "long months" when the pair did not talk at all beyond regular board meetings after the airline emerged from bankruptcy last spring.
Only in recent months have the two men started to talk on a more regular basis, with Bronner in the last two weeks assuming more of a leadership role usually reserved for the CEO. He convinced the pilots to join negotiations following months of rancor between that union and management, and offered fellow US Airways board member Bruce Lakefield as a potential liaison between the two sides.
In winning over the pilots, Bronner tried to convince them that his pension fund did not invest $240 million so that Bronner could make a lot of money personally -- striking a contrast between himself as two other airline investors, Carl Icahn and Bonderman, Siegel's old boss.
He also admitted that mistakes had been made by management, a frank admission that surprised some pilots. After the Feb. 20 meeting, the pilots quickly granted authority to enter wide-ranging contract negotiations with the company.
"In one two-hour presentation, Bronner solicited more action from the pilot group than David Siegel has in all his presentations," said pilots spokesman Jack Stephan.
The rare outreach by a chairman to unions showed that "Bronner is willing to take his own management and hang them out to dry," said Lauer, the local airline analyst.
Bronner is showing a "willingness to take management as a group and taint them as a mutual enemy," and the pilots' overtures to Bronner have "resulted in marginalizing management and David Siegel," Lauer said. The pilots "wanted him gone. In many respects, they now have him gone. They are dealing right with the voice from Alabama on this."
Asked in an interview to assess Siegel, Bronner said Siegel "has done magnificently" in a crisis situation and "I think we have a spectacularly great management team.
"Did they make some mistakes from an outsider point of view? Of course. Everybody makes mistakes." But, "when you look at the financial things they have been able to pull off, it is incredible."
Siegel, Bronner said, has "certain areas where (he is) better than in other areas." He said he realizes that Siegel, who declined to discuss his relationship with Bronner, is as frustrated as the unions are. But, he added, at some point both management and labor need to put aside their disappointments and deal with the situation.
As an example, he cited the labor techniques of Minnesota meat-packer George A. Hormel, the subject of a Bronner college thesis. Hormel, who built a national business from a plant in southern Minnesota in part though good relations with employees.
Bronner admitted that he and Siegel come from different perspectives. "He is younger, hard-driving and he works his people really hard," Bronner said.
By comparison, Bronner described himself as a "confused bureaucrat" who is more of a public official than he is a deep-pocketed investor. His hero, he said, is former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgantheau, who took on the mob in New York.
Bronner, through an assistant, declined comment about Siegel's contract, which allows him to leave for any reason in April and still receive $4.5 million in severance plus three years of pension and health benefits.
The April provision, added to Siegel's three-year contract during last year's bankruptcy, gives Siegel more freedom to leave the company if he wishes to do so.
Prior to that, to collect his severance, he would have to be fired, have his duties diminished or his salary reduced involuntarily.
Siegel, who signed a three-year contract in 2002, makes $600,000 a year in salary, down from the $750,000 he agreed to originally due to a voluntary cut in pay. He also has more than 1 million in stock options that do not vest until 2006.
If Siegel stays, he and Bronner still have a lot to work out.
The money-losing airline currently is in danger of defaulting on $900 million in loans it received as part of its back-from-bankruptcy recovery plan, and Bronner said there are discussions under way with the federal Air Transportation Stabilization Board, which backed the loans that lifted US Airways out of bankruptcy last March. "We are working on something that basically allows us more flexibility and allows them to get some of their money back," Bronner said.
The chairman is giving the airline until summer to straighten things out, or he may have to consider more drastic actions, such as the sale of some assets. The company already has solicited bids that range from $250 million to $400 million.
But JetBlue Airways Chief Executive Officer David Neeleman, who expressed an interest in the assets, last week said he doesn't think "US Airways is serious about selling any of their assets" and is using such talk to pressure unions into more concessions. The pilots and the company are scheduled to start wide-ranging contract talks Tuesday. The Mechanics have also agreed to join those talks.
Siegel, who in 2002 got off to a great start with US Airways workers amid praise for their many union sacrifices and his promises of frank dialogue, has lost what popularity he once had, now that he is approaching unions for yet another round of concessions as part of a plan to cut $1.5 billion in expenses.
Can he repair the relationship? "It is up to those people, really," Bronner said.
"Once you get into a battle, I always want to stay with that person," Bronner said. But sometimes, "people's feelings get hurt." The way to recover from that is to "get into the trenches" and "share the problems of getting from a situation of 'I', 'I', 'I' to 'we', 'we', 'we.' "
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mar. 6--Could David Siegel's days be numbered at US Airways?
The airline's chief executive officer is 3 1/2 weeks from being able to walk away from the Arlington, Va.-based carrier for any reason and collect $4.5 million in severance pay. This window, built into his contract during bankruptcy last year, is available for only 30 days, starting April 1.
Siegel maintains he is not going anywhere in April -- at least not voluntarily. "While my contract contains protections should I resign from my position in April, I -- intend to stay and work with the board and our employees to complete our restructuring."
Whether others want Siegel to stick around longer isn't as certain.
His future really is in the hands of US Airways' chairman and largest stockholder David Bronner, who backed his highest-paid employee when the pilots union late last year called for Siegel's ouster . More recently, however, the Alabama state pension fund chief has told people privately that he is reconsidering the management issue as US Airways inches closer to Bronner's summer deadline for a turnaround .
Another potential check on Siegel's future is the pilots union. Although it backed off from its public call for Siegel's resignation, the pilots are using their recent agreement to reenter concessionary talks as leverage to change the "corporate culture" of the nation's seventh-largest airline, implying the removal of the CEO.
Asked about Siegel this week in an interview, Bronner said Siegel's job was safe -- for now. "You can't consider it at this time with the difficulties you are in," he said, adding it would be "foolish on my part to say any more than that." Bronner also made it clear he would be watching Siegel closely and grading him on his performance.
"If he is successful and he wants to stay, you absolutely stay with him forever," he said. "If he is not successful, you have to make a change. No different than any other organization. It is just the real life in the real world we all live in."
Bronner was not Siegel's first choice as savior of US Airways. He had wooed David Bonderman, a wealthy Texas investor who turned around Continental Airlines while Siegel worked there in the 1990s and picked Siegel to lead that airline's Continental Express division.
But after Siegel solicited a $200 million bid from Bonderman's Texas Pacific Group in 2002, Bronner stepped in with a better offer. He also argued that the relationship between Siegel and Bonderman constituted a "sweetheart deal" and cast doubt on whether US Airways could fairly evaluate competing bids.
Siegel, said local airline analyst Bill Lauer, is in an "awkward position of working for a company whose largest shareholders are strangers to the original engagement." Bronner's "definition of success may be very different than what David Bonderman's might have been."
After one of his first meetings with Siegel, in September 2002, Bronner said he was "very impressed -- I think he is very capable of making US Air successful." He let Siegel run the airline without any interference from the top and, according to Bronner, there were "long months" when the pair did not talk at all beyond regular board meetings after the airline emerged from bankruptcy last spring.
Only in recent months have the two men started to talk on a more regular basis, with Bronner in the last two weeks assuming more of a leadership role usually reserved for the CEO. He convinced the pilots to join negotiations following months of rancor between that union and management, and offered fellow US Airways board member Bruce Lakefield as a potential liaison between the two sides.
In winning over the pilots, Bronner tried to convince them that his pension fund did not invest $240 million so that Bronner could make a lot of money personally -- striking a contrast between himself as two other airline investors, Carl Icahn and Bonderman, Siegel's old boss.
He also admitted that mistakes had been made by management, a frank admission that surprised some pilots. After the Feb. 20 meeting, the pilots quickly granted authority to enter wide-ranging contract negotiations with the company.
"In one two-hour presentation, Bronner solicited more action from the pilot group than David Siegel has in all his presentations," said pilots spokesman Jack Stephan.
The rare outreach by a chairman to unions showed that "Bronner is willing to take his own management and hang them out to dry," said Lauer, the local airline analyst.
Bronner is showing a "willingness to take management as a group and taint them as a mutual enemy," and the pilots' overtures to Bronner have "resulted in marginalizing management and David Siegel," Lauer said. The pilots "wanted him gone. In many respects, they now have him gone. They are dealing right with the voice from Alabama on this."
Asked in an interview to assess Siegel, Bronner said Siegel "has done magnificently" in a crisis situation and "I think we have a spectacularly great management team.
"Did they make some mistakes from an outsider point of view? Of course. Everybody makes mistakes." But, "when you look at the financial things they have been able to pull off, it is incredible."
Siegel, Bronner said, has "certain areas where (he is) better than in other areas." He said he realizes that Siegel, who declined to discuss his relationship with Bronner, is as frustrated as the unions are. But, he added, at some point both management and labor need to put aside their disappointments and deal with the situation.
As an example, he cited the labor techniques of Minnesota meat-packer George A. Hormel, the subject of a Bronner college thesis. Hormel, who built a national business from a plant in southern Minnesota in part though good relations with employees.
Bronner admitted that he and Siegel come from different perspectives. "He is younger, hard-driving and he works his people really hard," Bronner said.
By comparison, Bronner described himself as a "confused bureaucrat" who is more of a public official than he is a deep-pocketed investor. His hero, he said, is former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgantheau, who took on the mob in New York.
Bronner, through an assistant, declined comment about Siegel's contract, which allows him to leave for any reason in April and still receive $4.5 million in severance plus three years of pension and health benefits.
The April provision, added to Siegel's three-year contract during last year's bankruptcy, gives Siegel more freedom to leave the company if he wishes to do so.
Prior to that, to collect his severance, he would have to be fired, have his duties diminished or his salary reduced involuntarily.
Siegel, who signed a three-year contract in 2002, makes $600,000 a year in salary, down from the $750,000 he agreed to originally due to a voluntary cut in pay. He also has more than 1 million in stock options that do not vest until 2006.
If Siegel stays, he and Bronner still have a lot to work out.
The money-losing airline currently is in danger of defaulting on $900 million in loans it received as part of its back-from-bankruptcy recovery plan, and Bronner said there are discussions under way with the federal Air Transportation Stabilization Board, which backed the loans that lifted US Airways out of bankruptcy last March. "We are working on something that basically allows us more flexibility and allows them to get some of their money back," Bronner said.
The chairman is giving the airline until summer to straighten things out, or he may have to consider more drastic actions, such as the sale of some assets. The company already has solicited bids that range from $250 million to $400 million.
But JetBlue Airways Chief Executive Officer David Neeleman, who expressed an interest in the assets, last week said he doesn't think "US Airways is serious about selling any of their assets" and is using such talk to pressure unions into more concessions. The pilots and the company are scheduled to start wide-ranging contract talks Tuesday. The Mechanics have also agreed to join those talks.
Siegel, who in 2002 got off to a great start with US Airways workers amid praise for their many union sacrifices and his promises of frank dialogue, has lost what popularity he once had, now that he is approaching unions for yet another round of concessions as part of a plan to cut $1.5 billion in expenses.
Can he repair the relationship? "It is up to those people, really," Bronner said.
"Once you get into a battle, I always want to stay with that person," Bronner said. But sometimes, "people's feelings get hurt." The way to recover from that is to "get into the trenches" and "share the problems of getting from a situation of 'I', 'I', 'I' to 'we', 'we', 'we.' "
Harry Callahan
Veteran
The same thing was said here in Charlotte on WSOC. However it was not on the website.youngblood said:
www.wsoctv.com
Light Years
Veteran
- Aug 27, 2002
- 2,878
- 0
Wow. That article should have a post of its own.
- Banned
- #27
Guess Bronner and the reporter need to look up some History at Hormel:BoeingBoy said:
In December of 1984, the members of United Food and Commercial Workers local P-9 initiated a campaign against wage and benefit cuts at the Hormel Company in Austin, Minnesota. By the summer of 1985, they were involved in what many observers would come to regard as the strike of the decade, both because of the energy and imagination of the union members and the nationwide response to their cause. Committed to solidarity and the conviction that one generation's sacrifice will result in a better life for the next, the revolutionary workers of Austin fought a dual battle against a powerful corporation bent on breaking their resistance and against their own unsympathetic international union.
Kenneth E. Tilsen Papers.
This collection consists of legal files for selected cases documenting Tilsen's career as an attorney in St. Paul, including the legal aftermath of the 1985-1986 Hormel meatpackers strike (Hansen v. Guyette and the Austin Labor Center case). The United Food and Commercial Workers Local P-9 cases were just a few of many legal disputes that erupted when United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local P-9 members, all employees of the Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin were ordered by the UFCW International to cease a strike that had initially been authorized. When the Local refused to end its strike as ordered, the International placed the Local in trusteeship. Tilsen's cases concern a dispute between the Local P-9 and Joseph Hansen, the trustee appointed for the Local P-9 by the International in May 1986. Much of the dispute focused on control of the Local P-9's headquarters, the Austin Labor Center, which was run by a separate corporation, the Austin Labor Center, Inc., and the corporation's assets. The trustee also brought suit against James Guyette and other former officers of the Local P-9, accusing them of violating court orders by obstructing the trustee from taking control of assets. Tilsen represented the Austin Labor Center, Inc., and the Local P-9 members in these cases, which were eventually dismissed or settled after more than two years of legal wrangling. Files consist primarily of a chronological series of pleadings, affidavits, orders, and other court documents. In addition the series includes correspondence, interrogatories, and research files. The correspondence files include color snapshots of the Austin Labor Center mural, which was destroyed by vandals during the legal dispute.
Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and the Future of the Labor
Movement
by Authors: Peter J. Rachleff
Released: February, 1993
Rachleff, labor historian who "studies the past because he is interested in the future", writes the perfect and much needed antidote to Barbara Koppels Academy Award-winning documentary about the Hormel Strike, a film that cast the P-9ers and their supporters as "hapless victims" engaged in a hopeless cause. As an academic AND an activist who personally participated in this struggle and became the chair of the Twin Cities P-9 Support Committee, Rachleff succeeds in putting things into their proper historical perspective, describing the betrayal of a community by a formerly paternalistic family owned corporation (and a DFL governor) and a rank-and-file by their own international union, but most importantly, he inspires all working stiffs by showing union democracy in action and the potential of a movement that motivates family, friends, and workers from around the country. The final chapter outlines the positive lessons drawn from these experiences and gives hope for the future of the labor movement. This is a must read for any union member and anyone thinking that they need a union.
- Banned
- #28
Bob, all unions are national and some are international.
American Dream:
By Roger Ebert
In 1984 the Hormel meat-packing company offered its Austin, Minn., union workers a new contract in which their wage would be cut from $10.69 to $8.25 an hour, and other benefits would be cut by 30 percent. The workers were not overjoyed. The company had just declared an annual profit of $29 million, and the cuts seemed inspired by a management desire to maximize profits at the cost of any other consideration.
In the climate of the times - shortly after Reagan had fired all of the striking air traffic controllers - a strike seemed like a dangerous risk, but the meatpackers of Local P-9 in Austin walked out.
Their decision and its repercussions are the subject of "American Dream," the documentary by Barbara Kopple which won last year's Academy Award. This is the kind of movie you watch with horrified fascination, as families lose their incomes and homes, management plays macho hardball, and rights and wrongs grow hopelessly tangled.
Kopple went to Kentucky to document a bitter miner's strike in "Harlan County, U.S.A.," one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. That strike offered clear-cut choices between good and evil. The Hormel strike, which she follows as it spans agonizing months and years, weaves a more tangled web. The local union, which has decided to act independently from its parent international union in Washington, hires a free-lance strike consultant named Ray Rogers, who comes in with charts, graphs and promises of national press attention. He delivers, but at the cost of denying Local P-9 the experienced negotiating skills that the international could have supplied.
After P-9's campaign is under way and its position has solidified, the international sends in Lewie Anderson, an experienced negotiator who despairs at the naivete of the locals. "They made the critical mistake of opening up the whole contract," Anderson says despairingly at one moment. "That allows the company the chance to renegotiate language it took us 40 years to win."
Anderson, a chain-smoking everyman with the weary charisma of a Lech Walesa, wants to compromise with Hormel. The P-9 militants, fired up by Rogers and by their local president, want no compromise. They want their $10.69 an hour or else. The company locks out the striking workers and eventually begins to hire replacements, while some dissident local members break away from P-9 and side with Anderson. The international in Washington eventually declares the strike illegal, seizes control of P-9, and negotiates its own deal with Hormel. But the majority of P-9 members remain loyal to the strike, and eventually some 80 percent of them lose their jobs.
The outcome is even more complicated than that. Although Hormel negotiates a compromise wage with the union, it soon closes down half the plant and then rents it to another meatpacker that pays $6.50 an hour. As "American Dream" documents these developments, we are torn two ways. We want to see the movie as a battle between right and wrong, good and evil. On the other hand, we also see it as a struggle between two strategies. Would P-9 have been luckier if it had never heard of Ray Rogers and his consulting wizardry, and allowed Lewie Anderson to negotiate a settlement? Or would Hormel have shot down half its plant anyway, in a transparent move to allow the $6.50 operation?
One of the key issues in "American Dream" is the legality of employers who hire permanent replacements for workers who are engaged in a legal strike. Some companies are so cocksure these days that they hire replacements and, if found in violation of labor laws, are happy to pay a fine. They're millions ahead in the long run. In a climate of high unemployment and White House hostility to unions, there are always workers only too glad to take someone else's job.
The people in this film are so real they make most movie characters look like inhabitants of the funny page. Families are torn apart. One brother goes back to work, another stays on the picket lines. Workers have tears in their eyes as they describe not being able to support their families. It becomes clear that no possible win by the members of P-9 could compensate them for the wages they have already lost - especially as they are striking, not for a raise, but against a pay cut. A nobility creeps onto the scene, as people make enormous financial and personal sacrifices simply for what they believe is morally right. Our hearts are torn, because on the basis of this film we are not sure they have chosen the wisest path.
Stories like the Hormel strike are too long and complicated to be told on a daily basis. Only a documentary like this has a canvas big enough for the whole picture.
Is there a lesson at the end of "American Dream"? I think there is. I think the lesson is that the American tradition of collective bargaining will break down if companies can simply ignore a legal strike, hire replacements, and continue as before. There was a time in American history when such behavior by management would have been seen as not only illegal but immoral. The new management philosophers who won ascendency in the 1980s dismiss such views as sentimentalism. They are concerned only with the bottom line, where they see profits, not people. The White House announced that for a recent overseas trip, the video library on Air Force One was stocked with "Gone With the Wind." Next flight, could they take along "American Dream"?
American Dream:
By Roger Ebert
In 1984 the Hormel meat-packing company offered its Austin, Minn., union workers a new contract in which their wage would be cut from $10.69 to $8.25 an hour, and other benefits would be cut by 30 percent. The workers were not overjoyed. The company had just declared an annual profit of $29 million, and the cuts seemed inspired by a management desire to maximize profits at the cost of any other consideration.
In the climate of the times - shortly after Reagan had fired all of the striking air traffic controllers - a strike seemed like a dangerous risk, but the meatpackers of Local P-9 in Austin walked out.
Their decision and its repercussions are the subject of "American Dream," the documentary by Barbara Kopple which won last year's Academy Award. This is the kind of movie you watch with horrified fascination, as families lose their incomes and homes, management plays macho hardball, and rights and wrongs grow hopelessly tangled.
Kopple went to Kentucky to document a bitter miner's strike in "Harlan County, U.S.A.," one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. That strike offered clear-cut choices between good and evil. The Hormel strike, which she follows as it spans agonizing months and years, weaves a more tangled web. The local union, which has decided to act independently from its parent international union in Washington, hires a free-lance strike consultant named Ray Rogers, who comes in with charts, graphs and promises of national press attention. He delivers, but at the cost of denying Local P-9 the experienced negotiating skills that the international could have supplied.
After P-9's campaign is under way and its position has solidified, the international sends in Lewie Anderson, an experienced negotiator who despairs at the naivete of the locals. "They made the critical mistake of opening up the whole contract," Anderson says despairingly at one moment. "That allows the company the chance to renegotiate language it took us 40 years to win."
Anderson, a chain-smoking everyman with the weary charisma of a Lech Walesa, wants to compromise with Hormel. The P-9 militants, fired up by Rogers and by their local president, want no compromise. They want their $10.69 an hour or else. The company locks out the striking workers and eventually begins to hire replacements, while some dissident local members break away from P-9 and side with Anderson. The international in Washington eventually declares the strike illegal, seizes control of P-9, and negotiates its own deal with Hormel. But the majority of P-9 members remain loyal to the strike, and eventually some 80 percent of them lose their jobs.
The outcome is even more complicated than that. Although Hormel negotiates a compromise wage with the union, it soon closes down half the plant and then rents it to another meatpacker that pays $6.50 an hour. As "American Dream" documents these developments, we are torn two ways. We want to see the movie as a battle between right and wrong, good and evil. On the other hand, we also see it as a struggle between two strategies. Would P-9 have been luckier if it had never heard of Ray Rogers and his consulting wizardry, and allowed Lewie Anderson to negotiate a settlement? Or would Hormel have shot down half its plant anyway, in a transparent move to allow the $6.50 operation?
One of the key issues in "American Dream" is the legality of employers who hire permanent replacements for workers who are engaged in a legal strike. Some companies are so cocksure these days that they hire replacements and, if found in violation of labor laws, are happy to pay a fine. They're millions ahead in the long run. In a climate of high unemployment and White House hostility to unions, there are always workers only too glad to take someone else's job.
The people in this film are so real they make most movie characters look like inhabitants of the funny page. Families are torn apart. One brother goes back to work, another stays on the picket lines. Workers have tears in their eyes as they describe not being able to support their families. It becomes clear that no possible win by the members of P-9 could compensate them for the wages they have already lost - especially as they are striking, not for a raise, but against a pay cut. A nobility creeps onto the scene, as people make enormous financial and personal sacrifices simply for what they believe is morally right. Our hearts are torn, because on the basis of this film we are not sure they have chosen the wisest path.
Stories like the Hormel strike are too long and complicated to be told on a daily basis. Only a documentary like this has a canvas big enough for the whole picture.
Is there a lesson at the end of "American Dream"? I think there is. I think the lesson is that the American tradition of collective bargaining will break down if companies can simply ignore a legal strike, hire replacements, and continue as before. There was a time in American history when such behavior by management would have been seen as not only illegal but immoral. The new management philosophers who won ascendency in the 1980s dismiss such views as sentimentalism. They are concerned only with the bottom line, where they see profits, not people. The White House announced that for a recent overseas trip, the video library on Air Force One was stocked with "Gone With the Wind." Next flight, could they take along "American Dream"?
Reservation Agent
Senior
- Aug 23, 2002
- 406
- 0
Interesting comments, so far..
Reservation Agent
Senior
- Aug 23, 2002
- 406
- 0
Mr Wolfe and Mr Gangwal failed at turning the company around ....and made millions from running it...The company could use that 30 million dollars, now..
