Read "Confessions of a Union Buster" and you will see this is typical management doom and gloom communications to make employees think they should be happy for what they have. Corporate/employee communication departments at airlines are very good at what they do. There will always be something they can point to in order to keep employees from asking for anything. Don't buy it.

In 2007-2008 when oil was making its way to stratospheric (and universally believed unjustified and unsustainable) highs, Continental employee communications and management would remind us on an almost daily basis of how high oil prices hurt the company. All of us at CAL can quote it verbatim: "For every $1 increase in the price of oil, it costs Continental an extra $44 million a year for fuel."

But wait, it gets better. When the price was going down, do you think management put that out on a daily basis? (Price is down $5 today so we just saved $220 million in fuel costs on an annualized basis.) NO! Our communications department managed to find some Wall Street analyst's article which said essentially that while the price of oil going down may appear to help the airlines it actually hurts the airlines financially! Can you believe it. In hindsight maybe it was true since the fuel hedgers at all the airlines managed to gamble away employees job security.

Roll your eyes to 90% of the stuff that comes out from management to employees. Then take a look at their pay over the past 10 years compared to your own. Do you think they are having any problems keeping up with inflation??