I agree. You treat your employees well and pay them well. Treat them with respect and they will go through walls for you. Also, I do agree that unions in certain situations are necessary and sometimes make it easier for management. Uniformity in pay scales and such are a boon. However, humans tend to be crybabies and if you get them all together and cry together it handcuffs management if you have a bunch of employees who really don't give a darn about you and your business. They are there to take what they can and see what they can get away with for the least work. Unions that use no common sense and purposely, in my opinion, loot businesses just because they can are not helpful at all.

Trust me I could tell you some stories about how some international reps lined their own pockets with gold at the expense of the membership. So, let's be real and stop drinking the union Koool-Aid and get in the real world.

- HF

We already know that ALPA will cross lines.

We know that PFAA didnt walk.

Sounds good to me, one less passenger up in FC. Might give some other elites a chance on the flights you would otherwise take.

I plan on conducting future business with NWA. The mechanic's union does not have my support. I wish them luck at finding other jobs or another career. Labor cuts have to be made, plain and simple, even if it means eliminating 53% of the positions. Many people who do not hold "union" positions, myself included have had to adapt to the changing economy. The airline industry has changed and is no longer what it used to be.

FWIW, I just purchased a package from NWA World Vacations. ^

SDF_Traveler

If you are foolish enough to "compete" in your industry by providing a product at less than it costs to provide it (which is exactly what the moron executives throughout the industry have done), then you deserve those troubles. And if you're a real sleaze you will make your workers pay the price for your stupidity while giving yourself a big fat raise as NW management did.

That's is what is really going on here.

The key in this situation is that the employees have already been through rounds of pay cuts.

It's one thing if there's a pay cut or benefit reduction, a lot of people have dealt with that. If it's a one-time deal, and there's a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel, I'd say suck it up.

At this point, their pay and benefits have been so devalued, NW's future isn't a sure thing, many of them will lose their jobs anyway with a new contract, so the company isn't giving them much to work with.

What do they have to lose here?

I saw a few pickets outside but inside the board showed no cancelled flights for this morning. Everything seems to be arriving pretty much on time (for a foggy August am) and departures are all listed as on time.

Dude, your Acura is a Honda which is Japanese. I don't care if the car is made in Ohio with Union Labor, where are the parts sourced? Where do the profits go ? Owning an Acura is not helping US Labor. You buy an American nameplate and more of you money will be helping American workers than buying that Acura "assembled" in Ohio. More people in Japan are benefitting off you than Americans. So, if you are all for "American" labor, sell that Acura, buy GM or Ford.

- HF

But no one forced you to choose this lifestyle. We've been through this discussion on this forum before, ad nauseum. If you think your career choice offers a poor quality of life, then change it! To demand outsized compensation, above and beyond what the market will bear, and then to bitterly complain when the market won't bear that demand, is ludicrous, self-flagellating, and downright masochistic.


According the the US Census (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet...US-1&-_sse=on), you will note that 79% of all Americans live in urbanized areas and 80% live in metropolitan areas. The average salaries I cited earlier already account for the fact that 4 out of 5 Americans live in higher-cost urban centers. Besides, while MSP and DTW are likely more expensive than smaller towns in the Midwest, you certainly can't argue that they are more expensive than the entire Northeast and West coasts of the United States, where 112 million Americans work, pay taxes, and buy houses. Since you are from the DC area, you should know that the cost of living is higher there than it is in the Midwest: according to BestPlaces.net (http://www.bestplaces.net/col/Default.aspx)
Washington DC is 20% more expensive than Detroit, and housing is 32% more expensive (vastly underextimated, because the data are from 2000, and since then home prices in DC have approximately doubled).

Still feeling all that sympathy for MSP and DTW based mechs 'scraping by' on 58,000 - or 70,000 according to the Detroit Free Press - living in cities which have costs of living only slightly higher than the national average?

Perhaps it's time to ask what you do for a living, and how much you make, that you do lead such a seemingly jaded lifestyle. As I pointed out in the links above, you apparently have access to wonderful benefits - benefits that many Americans don't. Perhaps you are entitled to them; maybe you work very long hours; maybe your position has required an enormous amount of training and education; maybe you're just really smart, or really lucky, or both. That's neither here nor there. The point is, the majority of American workers have access to fewer benefits, and make substantially less money, than the mechs that we are talking about.

You may or may not be right, but again, facts are facts. This is what most American couples do to survive. I make a very good living, but Mrs. Psychtobe works, too. So do the sig ots of most of my friends and colleagues. It is the American way, 21st century style. We can debate the pros and cons of that lifestyle, but I hope you're not advocating for striking NW mechanics to be the lone voice in the wilderness on this issue! I can just see the headlines now: "NW mechanics strike; claim US government enslaves its workers by forcing women to work; advocate for single earner families and return to 1950s!"

That figure is well-known and is sourced to the Department of Labor website.

I do agree with you here. The mechs didn't have a good choice. When more than 50% of the voting base was guaranteed to lose their jobs, the strike was inevitable.

The outcome, however, is also inevitable. Mech wages and jobs will be cut, and by a significant amount. Global trade brings global competition and every American worker can feel it. Unless you are advocating for protectionist restrictions to international trade, the trend is unstoppable. Mechanics work can be done cheaper by someone else. Eventually it will be.

And you will have contributing to driving down wages in this country while I will not have. And I will sleep well at night knowing my dollars did not go to support that.

All of my travel (and my wife's) is paid for out of our own pockets. We quite like the status quo, and we don't have any customers to pass the costs on to.

Deregulation of the airline industry has brought about competition and a reduction in ticket prices that has made air travel affordable for millions. This mechanics strike is one of the last gasps of the old system; it will soon be over and forgotten.

Meanwhile, LTRS, if you would like give NW a big tip every time you fly & soak your customers for the expense, I'm sure NW would appreciate your generosity.

I'm not really interested in helping US robber barrons of this era. I won't buy a car that is not made by US workers, but I have no loyalty to US robber barron corporations, so don't really care where the profits go so long as the employees get decent treatment. I also try to stay in union hotels when I travel. Not always possible, but I try.

Union busting drives down wages for all of us eventually. I'm not sure why I should spend my dollars to drive a knife into my own back in the long run. We can agree to disagree, but I think you are being short-sighted.

Those rust belt city workers have not yet grasped that those high paying jobs are already gone. They can strike or fight back or whatever but nothing will bring them back.

You won't like the status quo when it trickles down to you. I don't know who your employer is, but if they paid you decently you could afford to pay what it costs to fly instead of reveling at that fact that you pay less than what it costs the airline to fly you, which in turn results in money being lifted out of the pockets of their workers.

Next time you fly NW why don't you just go up to a mechanic and demand his wallet? Cut out the middleman.

Here's the problem, unions are run by people who don't work for the employers, but are employed off the backs of the union membership themselves. These featherbedders are still earning a paycheck today unilike the union membership who they ordered to the picket lines. Mister O.V. whoever he is will still be able to make his mortgage payment next month. How about the guys who are walking in a circle holding a stick in the air? The unions are only interested in doing things that keep the DUES rolling in. Follow the money, kids. Here's something that few folks ever ponder and it tells you a world of information about unions: They HURT companies, ALWAYS. And the unions know this. Look on ANY union website and you will see that they make it clear that it is everybody's DUTY to organize EVERY workplace, regardless of situation. But why is it, if unions are so damn good, that unions fight to the death against any attempt by their office workers to join a union? They KNOW that it hurts the organization. So only evil corporations should have to tolerate a unionized workforce, its rigid work rules, its reluctance to terminate the incompetent...but unions themselves should not be inconvenienced by having to abide by the same rules and conditions that evil corporations do. Unions want the freedom to do exactly what the evil corporations are prohibited from doing by the union contracts.

The other thing that you MUST understand here is that unions are about two things and two things only: MONEY and POWER. They can insist that they are about working wages, membership, and workers rights or whatever other nonsense they spew, but they are only about money and power.

The airline has to cut costs. There is just no way around this. They cannot keep paying these exorbitant salaries (yes, EXORBITANT, based on the company's ability to pay them) but the union feels that they can get jobs kept and wages high by--here's the union logic--HURTING THE AIRLINE as badly as they can.

I have worked for struggling companies before, and when they came to me and said that they were in trouble, I tried to find ways to be more productive, spend less money to get the same work quality, eliminate as much waste as I could, to keep the company afloat and my paycheck rolling in. These birds do the exact opposite and think that they can get continued paychecks and all the present jobs by inflicting as much finacnial damage as they can.

I flew NWA out of Denver back home to Chicago last week. While filling up the car at the airport gas station, I noticed an airport work truck with a union bumper sticker on it. It said something like "Strength, Unity, Pride" or words very close to that. Ever notice how union rarah propaganda never says things like "Efficiency, profitability, productivity" or things that actually HELP a company. The union mentality is that by being big and mean, they can intimidate anyone to do anything.

Unions shops are adverserial by nature. The workers hate everything and are convinced that the company is out to get them. The company wants to make money for its owners. So instead of doing what needs to be done to make the place profitable, they do as little as possible for as much as possible. They claim that a union shop is the only way to higher pay. I have worked several union jobs and every time, EVERY SINGLE TIME I leave the union job for a nonunion job and get a HUGE pay increase. When you then add in the fact that my salary was even lower at the union shop because the union steals money from the membership through dues that are used in large part to support political causes that the membership may or may not agree with and to pay the inflated salaries of union bosses, the nonunion shops are far far more beneficial for my family. You want to know how I avoid getting fired? IM THE BEST AT WHAT I DO. In the real world, the most efficient employee who gets the most done and makes the company the most money gets the cherry work assignments and the best schedules. In the union world, it's who ever has been there the longest, regardles of if there is a new guy who outproduces them. Any system where seniority is more important than work quality and quantity is hopelessly doomed to failure. If I have to depend on a collective bargaining contract to have job security, I have a lot of job improvement to do. Then again, I blame my misfortunes on myself rather than on my employer. I realize that if I'm not the best in the shop, that I have some worrying and some improvement to do. A union worker takes the same situation and worries about who has seniority and takes no personal responsibility whatsoever.

Final thought: The union mind is so disconnected from reality that if they run across someone crossing their picket line to do replacement work, they actually believe that calling that person a "scab" will make them turn around and run home. They don't understand that this person needs the work and they can call them any name in the book and they are going to go on and earn the money that the union worker has voluntarily walked away from. Sometimes the union mind then says "unga-bunga, me beat up scab" and use violence to accomplish what namecalling couldn't.

GO NWA! I will be flying on you this upcoming week!!

--Paul

Southwest, Air Tran, Jet Blue. I hadn't realized they were all going bankrupt.