La Li Lu Le Lo said:
Productivity has been doubled? So you are telling me fleet is loading twice as many bags and the mechanics are doing twice as many repairs? I call B.S.
As measured in revenue produced our productivity per employee has more than doubled. IIRC in 2002 AA grossed around $18 billion, in 2014 the new AA grossed around $42 billion
AA may be making profits but it is not because productivity has shot up 100 percent. Get real Bob.
Correct, I didn't say it was, AA would be making profits even if our pay increased at the same rate as productivity, just not as much profits. That my point, AA could be paying us a fair wage and still be profitable, they just choose not to, they don't even want to give us profit sharing.
At any rate why are you mad at AA? It is their job to make money for their shareholders. Who you should be mad at is the people that negotiated that deal for you.
Because even in business the exchange should be fair. They expect us to give maximum effort for minimal pay. There is an ideal called ethics and quid pro quo that should be followed.
In business you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate, and TWU has been a piss poor negotiator.
I think its worse than that, I think its corruption, and AA had a hand in it by essentially bribing out International with padded pensions and executive perks such as A-5 passes for them and their families. Again ethics, one who pays bribes and conspires to defraud someone else is just as guilty as the one who accepts the bribe.
I find it funny you speak of rejecting socialism and communism while the TWU is funneling money to a party with a socialist agenda. The whole premise the Democrats are running on is "wealth redistribution" (gotta stick it to those wealthy, greedy job creators). How much more communist can you get than that?
Sad. Have you ever even been to any other country? I guess some people simply go through life in a black and white world of absolutes. If you think the Democrats are Socialist, or Communist then you really don't know what either of those words really means, either in a historic or theoretic sense. Let me ask you something, how many jobs has Parker, or Horton created?
Part of your so called higher productivity is due in large part to technology. Factories are not more productive because people work harder Bob, they are more productive because they have machines doing the work.
True, but that was even more the case throughout the last century, and for the period from Roosevelt till Reagan people in this country shared in the benefits of increased productivity that was mainly driven by technology, in fact people started working less where the 8 hour day replaced the 12 hour day and the workweek went from 6 to 5 days per week. Can you think of anything else that was happening on this planet, not just here in the US, but across the world during that same period of time?
Part of the reason your living standard is lower is because America has buried itself in debt to fund those "entitlements" you Democrats love so much. Couple that with stupid people spending 600 dollars on an I-Phone then complaining they are broke.
So I suppose it has nothing to do with the fact that we have Military Installations in 40 other countries and spend more on weapons than the rest of the world -combined? Do you know what its called when you have your military in someone else's country? Its called an occupation. You may claim we need all those bases and the expense of maintaining them for "Security" or "to protect our interests" but many of the countries we occupy are "Allies" and those "Allies" don't have military bases in the US. Why are we paying for bases in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain and England? If anything you should be pissed off that all those countries have Socialized Medicine, Socialized College Education, Sociailzed minimums as far as Holidays (Vacation) Sick time, maternity and Paternity leave, Labor Laws far more protective than we have and a Welfare system thats far more generous than ours because they aren't paying for all that military .. Plus all workers are allowed to strike and they don't have scams like Chapter 11 Reorganization, those workers have more Freedom and rights than we do!!!
I also don't suppose its because of all the tax breaks we give corporations? According to you its because we have too many entitlements. Too many old people that arent forced to eat cat food and too many kids in school?
The $600 cell phone isn't stopping them from buying a home or retiring. Its the $500/month they have to pay for medical insurance, and other everyday commodities including the extra taxes they have to pay so corporations don't have to pay their fair share and we can occupy 40 countries across the globe. A while back an old timer brought in his paycheck from the early 60s. He compared the $100/week he was earning then to the $1000 we were making at the time. He said that the house he bought for $20,000 would now cost $200,000 so its really no different, then I pointed out that out of that $100 check he cleared $85, but out of his $1000 check he was only clearing around $650, so its not the same, its 20% less. Inflation driven tax bracket creep brought us into higher tax brackets forcing us to pay more in taxes so those at the top could pay less. In reality we lost buying power.
By the way I'm not a Democrat. In fact the only Party I ever registered as was Republican, back in 1980, and what a mistake that was. Then I grew up.
Most industries that are skilled labor (which you are) go to a competitor if they are not satisfied with pay and benefits. Part of the price you pay for belonging to such a heavily UNIONized industry is "seniority lock". The trick is to make sure it is worth that price.
The "Seniority lock" is more due to the fact that this is a 24/7 industry where the work we do is primarily done at night. If I had to do it all over again I would not be in this industry and have made it clear to my kids to not follow me.
