NY Times -

Under My Thumb

"SEATTLE — This is how the middle class dies, not with a bang, but a forced squeeze. After a global corporation posts record profits, it asks the state that has long nurtured its growth for the nation’s biggest single tax break, and then tells the people who make its products that their pension plan will be frozen, their benefits slashed, their pay raises meager. Take it or we leave. And everyone caves.

Well, almost everyone. All went according to script as the Boeing Company showed what to expect in a grim future for a diminished class — the vanishing American factory worker. The threats were issued, the tax giveaways approved, the political leaders warned of the need to buckle to Boeing....

...The events of the last few days show the utter bankruptcy of economic policy prescriptions offered by both political parties. You want tax breaks and deregulation — the Republican mantra? The $8.7 billion granted Boeing this week is the largest single state-tax giveaway in the nation’s history. It wasn’t enough. You want government training for schools and highly skilled workers — the Democratic alternative? There was plenty of that, to Boeing’s liking, in the package."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/op...umb.html?_r=1&

How many here are unionized pilots? Would you be willing to open up your current agreement mid-term to give concessions to a company who just posted record profits? This, while threatening to move your pilot base? I know many of you have endured concessions under bankruptcy and the threat of bankruptcy, but Boeing does not have that problem.

They smell an opportunity to suck more life out of the working class line workers with the threat of moving. Of course that is only my opinion.