Originally Posted by Sooner
Since UAL made a motion to the BK judge today to cancel all union contracts unless the various unions agreed to this latest round of work rule changes and pay cuts, where will your sympathy be? Those flight attendants are now being asked to work 16 hour duty days, while being paid for 8 hours. Can you think of any other job where that is the norm?
Sooner
I can't think of another job where this is the case, but I do know of another industry where 50-60% of their employees were made to work 0 days for 0 hours (ie laid-off). The airline industry is a rose garden compared to the blood bath that the telecom industry went through a few years ago. To put in perspective Nortel, UA and AA had about the same amount of employees. To date, Nortel has laid off more employees than UA and AA combined. (and the remaining ones took a pay cut) Nortel and Lucent laid off more people than UA or AA ever had!
As a person who has laid people off and has been laid off with a shake of the hand and a 2 week check, I can't comprehend why the FA's arent counting their lucky stars to be able to at least get SOME income while looking for another job. I have plenty of friends (including myself) that would have jumped at the opportunity.
IMO, the quicker you can get over the anger towards your past employer, the quicker you realize that you have plenty of skills that others will pay for. I am sure this is the case for the many good FA's that I have meet!