Mandatory viewing
 

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/retirement/

Starts around 6:30. This should be mandatory viewing for everyone at UAL. It's from 2006, but it absolutely shows what we may be going through in the near future.

That is just depressing.

Thank you for that. Sad :(

Lost me at 12:35.

At one minute into the video,a commentator says” We are now shifting from lifetime pensions, to lifetime work”..,should say shifting back, to lifetime work.

The concept of living comfortably for 20 to 30 years after stopping working is a relatively new concept and when you step back and examine the idea of having almost an entire second career lifetime paid for by savings or a third party is pretty incredible...for most of any population; economically speaking. Few careers in modern history had mandatory age retirement (ours among them), at a relatively young age. Thus the traditional pensions.

My maternal grandfather lived about three years after he stopped working as a butcher.
My paternal great-grandfather lived about the same. I still have a copy of his first social security benefits letter in the ‘40’s. It was around $19 dollars a month. He was a shoe factory worker, who emigrated around turn of century. Dad said he died content with what he accomplished in his new life.

We are in a period where the world economy has not figured out nor caught up with medical science and clean living of the late 20th century, economically or ethically.

I remember in the early’60’s visiting a great aunt in a “home”. She was in her ‘90s, still healthy physically. We all felt sorry for her. She had no purpose in life.. no job or responsibilities.Just existing relatively comfortably, waiting for death. My next door neighbor is 91. He is in the same situation. Can walk..barely. Can’t garden (his hobby), can’t drive. He told me last winter matter of factly “guess I’m just waiting to die”. Meanwhile the medical and pharmaceutical business, (yes they are businesses) keep him going for their own profit, paid for by his progeny, who rarely see him. They are busy with their own lives.

We are having trouble in our country accepting the concept of mortality, for some reason.

Great post

Put another way,

When your career and compensation package has been governed by binding contracts, and when those contracts have contained a pension since the day you were hired, and when you have deferred a significant amount of your annual wage in exchange for later payment ( your pension was NOT a FREEBIE) you have every right to be enraged when the company uses deceit and slight of legal hand to steal your money from you.

At least, that's how it appears to me. Got the GD Tee-shirt.

Don't understand why you sound bitter. You have your ESOP stock. Oh, wait......

If (when) the company comes for concessions, I really hope the younger guys listen to the old heads. It wasn’t that long ago when I was chastised for cautioning the younger guys how this economic environment won’t last.

Only 2 things in life are certain as the saying goes......

Rage won’t change that, just make it less bearable.

emphasis mine, based on experience.

I'm not raging. I just like to keep lessons learned in my mind so as not to repeat them. And perhaps, just perhaps, some of the cheery (till last month, anyway) FNGs will get an idea of how invaluable they are to the co when the cash runs out.

They will furlough and screw those remaining. It's just that simple.

That "I'm here to make the airline better" smile will get wiped right off their face. Only after they figure out what just happened to them. Then they'll watch the company hire new pilots to drown out voices of lessons learned. Wash, rinse, repeat.

No. You are raging like a your typical lunatic way. You are retiring soon as well, correct?

The ironic thing is the FNGs, the ones hired "to make the airline better", told not to listen to those old bitter legacy pilots, embolden to believe they themselves can save the airline via level 4 game changing bore 4 behavior, will be convinced that their voluntary concessions will save the airline. They won't know what hit them til it's over.

Then decades later, after futile attempts to claw back what they thought was the best contract ever, the airline will hire new pilots. Those new pilots will be told of the bitter old pilots they share the cockpit with. The new pilots will attempt to drown out the warnings.

Karma

If you think I'm raging, you're mistaken. Where was the flying spittle? I'm simply pointing out facts that those my seniority got to enjoy during our careers. All of them are easily verified. As far as retirement, certainly not soon enough for me, and hopefully not soon enough for you.

Just for the record, I wasn’t trying to bag on the Ol’ Fish. Sarcasm doesn’t always come out properly via text/forum/etc. I’m the grumpy old fart. I hope that the young bucks will listen to our cautionary tails. They were learned the hard way.

exactly

Attachment 5184

Post merger hire. Always told my students the USAF meant more to them than they did to the USAF. Same-same GI with UAL.

I don't believe the "shared sacrifice" BS coming out of management right now, it's tenderizer before we get put on the grill. The laughable change to SRL just confirms that. Let a judge figure it out, I'm not slitting my own throat. However, I am preparing for the worst.

bore 4...that was a good one

Everything is going to be OKAY! Scott threw in a “CORE 4” during the last town hall with Oscar. Remain calm, keep allowing the crew desk to rape the contract, everything will be okay.

Brilliant!

All this back and forth. Take your unemployment like a man and when their ready to recall come back as if you never left. Don't give into any demands or concession. I've been laid off numerous times in my life, it's not a big deal. Too hell if I'm gonna except concession and still get laid off, because that's what's gonna happen! Nothing is gonna save the bottom 1/3 of us so why bother!

There bickering solved! Now can we talk about booze/chicks/guys/boats/cars again or whatever floats your boat...anything but this nonsense! Because there's nothing any of us can do about this situation.

THIS is worth re-posting!

We could work for free and it wouldn't help. I recall Larry Kellner and Jacques LaPointe screwing the CAL pilots and their whole self-created "liquidity shortfall financial crisis" that created the Stockholm Syndrome within the CAL MEC as presented by Jackson Martin, Tom Stivala, Rick Muir, Dave Zullo and a few others.

We just fly the jets and that's it. Our services and the value of those services are what they are. As pilots we plan. We have redundant systems, and we have alternates in case our flight can't be completed as planned. Pilots are not a glass "piggy bank" that says "break glass in case of emergency, rob us-shaft us, don't return the money."

A message for all pilots is this: Diversify your skill-set. unless you are within 5 years of retirement have a plan B and have something else you can do to pay the bills. have a 6 month emergency fund, etc.

My 2 cents is this: stock buy backs benefit management's stock options and the institutional investors they court.. There is a small group of folks that feel it's a strategic move to help prevent a hostile take-over. But, there aren't too many Gordon Gecko's around any more. The real thing we should be telling management is this: Save up for a rainy day. and have access to cash via a substantial line of credit. It could be a pandemic, a public health crisis, or a national security event, or a global security threat. Those are all possibilities, and all require an executable plan.

Stock buy-backs don't figure into any of those plans. We can reasonably predict some sort of major crisis every 20 to 30 years. managements need to have plans ready and actionable when the balloon goes up. This profession hasn't been made whole since 9-11 and the airline pilots who staff it must sacrifice allot to get here and to stay here. Without pilots to staff the airline and to keep it staffed, you don't have an airline. Best to plan for the future. History has a way of repeating itself, even if the circumstances are not identical, the ramifications after the fact most certainly follow a predictable pattern.

You mean history repeats itself? Wow what a concept!

It wasn't too long ago that the SCABS were all told they were the modern day equivalent of Jesus by management and that God had sent them to free the airline from the union pilots who were dragging the airline down with those weighty labor contracts during deregulation.

Lets not prostittue ourselves, even in times of trouble. Let's have our dignity and our contract too. Oh yeah one more thing. Scope protections need to be tougher; a whole lot tougher. Let's core 4 that concept for a while.

My Core 4: enforce and strengthen the contract, hold management accountable, strengthen our unions influence on government and the regulatory process, protect the profession by strengthening scope.