United Airlines is about to go bankrupt. Why? Because their union mechanics declined to take a cut in pay so United could stay in business without declaring bankruptcy.
That's a bit of a stretch don't ya think? The Union members rejection of the pay cuts is only the latest problem for United, it's not the reason that they are facing bankruptcy in the 1st place. And in all fairness to those mechanics, won't you consider that maybe they honestly feel that the airline has not done all it can to trim the fat in other areas before asking them to take a paycut? Sometimes you show a disturbing tendency to blame all a company's problems on the unions.
The only reason Fedex is taking away our business is through lower pricing. This is because their drivers are non-union, and they are not the best paid on the street.
That's another oversimplification designed to blame all our problems on the union. Fedex is offering lower pricing because they can afford it. So could we, but we choose not to. UPS is making huge profits, and clearly upper managemnt doesn't feel that we are losing enough volume to fedex to justify a pricewar. And those price differentials are only on the individual customer walking into parcel-plus looking to send a package to grandma, we do offer competetive discounts to our high volume shippers. Like you said, UPS came ino the contract negotiations with a dollar amount they were willing to spend, an amount they believed they could spend and still remain competetive and flexible. Hoffa came through, and in a spirit of cooperation he gave the company an early contract, probably at a little less than the company was actually willing to spend. There are a lot of factors and variables facing a huge, highly profitable, international company in the business world of today, and a unionized workforce is only of them. It's just lazy to blame all bad things on the union.
(Message edited by deliver_man on November 30, 2002)