Airlines have no shareholder value.

I personally think the airline industry's last problem is the unions now, so I am not bashing you or your union, but blaming shareholders or creditors in the airline industry is just silly. So many billions have been lost by investors in airlines.

 

They can blame everything on the UAW, but the truth of the matter is, their incompetence is the cause of their failure. UAW is only a small part of the failing equation.

 

yea but what you dont understand is if everyone is willing to do the work at a lower wage, you can expect to live your life on welfare................Only the CEO's are allowed to live well? How about the incompetence of the CEO of Lehman bros who was awarded $160,000,000.00 in bonuses last year, look where he led the company!!!! yea Unions are the problem though.............

 

It's called the free market. The salaries people are paid naturally align with how much their skills are in demand, and how many people possess those skills. If you're doing a job that any minimally trained person can do, then you don't deserve to make a lot of money. If you're doing a job that requires a lot of specialized training and skills, then the market will ensure that you make a lot of money.

Unions break that equation, and thus render companies whose employees are unionized less able to compete with companies whose employees aren't. Granted, foreign labor is often cheaper than domestic labor, but to some degree that's government's job to regulate, and to some degree that's just the world changing, and attempting to resist it leads to problems like GM's.

[QUOTE=JoeyBalls,Sep 16 2008, 08:18 PM]Only the CEO's are allowed to live well?

 

The issue is entitlement. There should be none. CEO's can be dismissed by the board of directors at a whim, why not the workers?

Some CEO's are worth their millions (thinking of Lee Iacocca, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates). Those CEO's helped to employ thousands of people and guided their companies through troubled waters. Bagging my groceries sure 'aint worth what the grocer's union wants it to be worth. Same deal with trucking them from docks to stores. Can't speak to what a pilot is worth, not enough knowledge of the skill and difficulty.

Unions drag down this country. If you don't respond to foreign competition you disappear entirely. Would you propose protectionist laws? Because without those who in their right mind would pay domestic prices versus world-class prices for goods? There's a reason Walmart blows away mon-and-pop stores. You can gripe and complain about their quality or policies but you can't argue their results. Nobody forces Joe Public to shop there.

Capitalism is part of what makes America great. Unions were necessary in the past but are a cancer on today's business.

 

My sister worked a high school job at a unionized grocery store. She was excited to get $10/hr (in Hawaii) until she found out that the union, who required a join fee (~$100 IIRC) when she started on, took nearly $2.00/hr of her wages from her in "fees," so she ended up with the same wage as anywhere else after the dues were paid.

That's just plain ugly, IMO. What do they do with 20% of wages? That particular union seemed to be a self-preserving entity, no longer a benefit to either the workers or the employer.

Also, didn't Mitt Romney try to get rid of toll roads in Massachusetts because it cost more to pay the toll takers wages than the revenue they collected from tolls?

I'm not trying to bash unions--anyone could easily give a counterpoint of a circumstance where a union might fix larger problems, especially in un/underdeveloped nations. It just sometimes amazes me what we let go on because it takes too much time/effort/money to fix a problem.

 

that analogy doesn't make any sense. you are a highly skilled worker. most union guy in production jobs are trade school educated at BEST.

it makes me want to punch babies every time i hear some 20 dollar an hour fork lift driver talk about how corporations are greedy. YOU GET PAID 20 ####ING DOLLARS AND HOUR TO DO A 10 DOLLAR AN HOUR JOB!

also, joey your comments really sound more like religious faith or high school pep rally-esque team spirit. you are so far submerged in that environment that it really seems that you can't look past your own self interest to see the big picture.

let me ask you a serious question. what reasons have you considered striking over? just curious.

 

unions exist to perpetuate themselves, like any bureaucratic entity.

joeyballs, your own personal experience with the airline industry is kind of a bad example - or a good one, i guess - because your industry is in the crapper.

the airline industry has been more or less run into the ground for ages now and no one has yet managed to step up and change things. i'm not saying that'd be easy; it's an extremely complicated business, with very high entry costs and slim profit margins made worse by fluctuating gas prices and many other factors. still, southwest is an example of an airline that has managed to do well... and yet none of the other major airlines seem to be able to duplicate their success. instead we the taxpayers end up footing the bill to keep everyone afloat when the government bails them out.

in a business like this, where everything changes on any given day and where money is extremely tight, i expect companies to have to make cuts wherever they can to stay afloat and make a profit. that's the goal of a business - making their employees happy is just one way to keep the business profitable, but that is NOT and has never been the primary goal of a business. if they can't remain profitable because they can't make cuts in salaries or lay off employees, then the unions are ultimately going to hurt the company. If the unions (combined with external factors) contribute to the company going under, then all the union employees will end up jobless, not just a few of them. A business only exists as long as it maintains profit over the long term. by cutting into the profit of the business, the union hurts the business and hurts the very people they are supposedly protecting. sure, in the short term the unions provides stability for the people they represent, but they hurt everyone long term.

it sucks to get a pay cut. it sucks to lose your job. unfortunately these things will (and must) happen in a semi-free market economy. if you want our economy to be stagnant, and you want our country to fail in the world market, then sure, unions are great. i prefer the way things work without unions, personally, and if anyone ever suggests unions in my industry i'll be heavily against it.

just my 2 cents, i'm not an economist or anything so take it with a grain of salt.

 

my dear ignorant friend how great is it? Take a look at our ECONOMY................

'nuff said


GREED IS BAD

 

Joey, next election, maybe you should run for president under the Socialist Party!

W/o getting into a long-winded essay on what caused our economic problems, I'd hardly blame capitalism. One thing about capitalism, in it's purest form, at least, is that there's no safety net, and businesses are allowed to sink or swim on their own merits.

I've always been a believer in less govt. intervention, but it's now become clear to me that we need more, not less, regulation in financial markets. I also think the Justice Dept. has been asleep at the wheel in reviewing mega-mergers for potential anti-trust implications.