Originally Posted by fastair

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summ...99-2533161_ITM

Check your facts....UAL got permission from the IRS in March of 2003 to liquidate SOME of the $3.3 billion in ESOP value. It was nowhere near over 7 years ago. Just becuase the investment in wages was over, the restrictions on trades existed until separation to maintain UAL ESOP tax benefits. Litigation was only settled a little over a year ago...If your finanical planning cannot remember (depending on your job and pay at the time) a few hundred thousand dollars of your retirement (not mine, but many pilots) that you could not control liquidating into 1% of it's value, please, don't give me advise on finanical planning.

I don't make 20-30k...I am not one of those thousand of sub-20k/yr flight attendants hired in the last year who want no at risk pay. I am stating that the less you make, the less disposable income you have to invest in the same very polarized high risk company that has all of your financial future tied to it.

Once you make enough to have disposable income, riskier forms of compensation in that surplus can make sense. To chastise those at the bottom of the pay scale for not being lucky enough to be able to risk 98% of your pay and still make a cool 500k cash is very short sided. There are far more employees making under 30k base than making over 250k base. Should the face of United (i.e. the front line employees who have contact with you) be insulted for their misfortunes? Should their unions and hired financial planners be considered cry babies for complaining that a man is given 90-100x his rather large base pay in bonuses when the company has not had a full year of non-chap 11 profits and was the airline with the largest loss in the 1st 1/4 (i believe it was the largest of all non-chap 11 airlines...chap 11 write offs aren't a valid comparison.)

You don't have to be sympathetic to me...I don't need it..you don't have to be sympathetic to the service people that do your bidding on your flights...but you do have to get your timelines straight when downplaying their rather recent massive losses when invested in UAL.