Originally Posted by
Carl Spackler
It did not kill the benefits they gained during the strike. And that was not the point anyway. The point was that union leaders and unified memberships can do extraordinary things...if they want to. ALPA hasn't acted like a union for a VERY long time.
You shouldn't do "extraordinary things" just for the sake of doing them. They should be a means to reach a goal. In the context of the TWU strike, their illegal actions didn't result in any meaningful improvements. In the end, a union leader was put in jail, the union was hit with a huge fine, the workers themselves had money garnished from their wages to pay off Taylor Law fines, and they really got nothing for it. Their leadership tried to save face by claiming that the strike prevented concessions to their pension, but in reality, state law didn't even require the TWU to bargain over pension issues, so the pension was never in danger in the first place. The whole thing was a waste. It shouldn't be used by anyone as an example for effective union work.
What an unbelievably silly statement. Revenue is the most important part of ANY business. Management teams can use totally legal accounting schemes to show costs such that they're not turning a profit. We've seen that for decades. It's harder for companies to hide revenue. AMR has no case for their intransigence. They're only able to be this stubborn due to the NMB acting as their union busting agent.
Ahh, so you believe management is "hiding money." Where exactly is this billions of dollars being hidden, exactly? And if it is, why are the shareholders not stringing up the BOD for depriving them of share price improvements that would certainly follow an announcement of these profits that you claim are being hidden?
Ridiculous. There is no hidden money, Carl. Profits can be manipulated slightly in the short term by using accounting tricks such as structuring ammortizations in creative ways, and managements sometimes do that to avoid profit sharing payments at a certain time, but it's only temporary, because the profits show up soon enough. They don't get hidden, they just get delayed. You could also argue that management is reducing profits by buying back stock or making large capital expenditures for growth or improvements, but none of that is true in the case of AMR.
Look, I would love it if it was possible for the APA to get full restoration, but it just isn't in the cards at this point. AMR just doesn't have the money. Improvements are certainly expected, but they won't get pre-concessionary rates on date of signing.