Originally Posted by
Lewbronski
Video of flight attendants union discussing the concessions. Their attorney starts speaking at about the 4 minute mark. He starts discussing how and why Gary Kelly turned down CARES Act loans in terms of asking for us for concessions at the 11:30 mark. Definitely worth checking out:
https://vimeo.com/466748088?fbclid=I...50GkXGrIpYWP5Y
No concessions.
Ya, the lawyer's part of the video is something SWAPA should put out. Everything he says in there is spot on.
Key point: not only could Gary Kelly have saved some or all of the $10 BILLION in share repurchases since 2014 for the inevitable downturns in this industry but he refused to take the BILLIONS that were available in government loans through the CARES Act this year because the conditions attached to the loans were "pretty onerous". Why were they onerous? Well, let's have Gary 'splain that:
"The terms of the government loan are pretty onerous ... And I think what's near and dear to shareholders' hearts are restrictions on dividends, which I object to, and share repurchases. I object to that as well. We're not paying dividends and buying back shares now, but obviously we'd like to have that flexibility in the future.
That means not only did Gary Kelly prioritize his investment banker friends and executive bonuses over his "coheart" underling employees in the past while he was dragging our negotiations out for years and failing to deliver on the -800 promise and the ROIC promise but even TODAY, when he had full knowledge of the impact of the covid crisis and the revenue shortfalls caused by it, he STILL PRIORITIZES Wall Street bigwigs and his VP buddy's stock bonuses over the rest of us.
He'd rather take money from his employees than not have the ability to give it to fat cats and inflate VP bonuses at SWA. Think about that.