Nobody has commented on the fact that this contract went down with an 86% vote. It wasn't close. Not everybody in the union is a hothead looking for a reason to strike. Aslo compared to years past (when they had meetings in the kingdome and would rile everybody up before the vote) people had time to look at this contract with a calm head and see what it was about.
I don't believe that everybody on this board immediately t5hinks the company is dong the right thing and the only thing they can afford to do.
We just paid $22M for a new CEO. That is before he walked in the door. We have spent $10B in the last few years buying back our own stock. And then we turned around and borrowed $10B to go into the leasing business (which we had always avoided). And then we complain that we don't have the money to develp new airplanes so we have to give away bigger chunks of it.
Oh lets see some of the other brilliant decisions: We just sold Witchita (at a loss).
We have had to take write downs or have sold at a loss several of the businesses we aquired in the last few years.
We are on our 4th CEO in 2 years. And yet none of you have any questions about the decisions the company makes. Just what 18,000 individuals decided.
Soome of the problems this company has are coming right out of the Harvard business school not the union ranks.
Keep reminding yourselves that the company could settle this strike very quickly if they wanted to. And it wouldn't cost them much money to do it.
I hear you and my heart aches for your dilema. For some reason this thought keeps coming to mind that if you're not the lead dog the scenery never changes.
Will the strike really help in the long term? Can those striking be fired and out of a job anyway? What are realistic alternatives? There are more workers in this country than jobs that require skilled labor it appears. We're not living in the days when striking made management take notice. There are too many alternatives now for decision-makers that hold the purse strings. Of course I could be wrong. My family haven't been under union control in at least 19 years and we've fared well by God's grace.