Bernie Ward: The middle class is done for -- It's a UAL thing

http://www.kgoam810.com/listenlive/listenlive.pls

He's pissed, really pissed.

Tune in as Bernie reads the handwriting on the wall to an unobservant public.

"There are two classes now: the protected and the chumps."

I'm tuning in now. :)

I'll have to pick up the rest of the program on the archives tomorrow. The sandman just stopped by and I'm ready to crash. Between the UAL and the national id card crap, it's numbing.

I've listened to the entire program.

Enjoy, Eleny.

pick sides, this is war...

by the way, I will quote Kennedy.... or rather paraphrase

Those who prevent peaceful revolution, guarantee a violent one....

Hey, we've got a NEW United Airlines.

Can you trust them?

Bankruptcy court cannot shield them from my contempt.

To UAL: I'll never use your wings again.

refuse to fly it... by the way, GM is next... they want to dump their pensions too

I need to buy a car soon, like in the next month or two.

If GM makes moves similar to UAL, I'm gonna buy my first Japanese vehicle.

I live in this country and auto workers are my neighbors.

When the UAW caves, the game is over.

a hybrid, I recomend it highly... by the way, that hybrid employs more Americans than oh many "american made" cars... fact of life, where they are assembled

but that those pensions were unrealistic and it was basically tough ass for the workers.

out and they are pressing hard and fast enough where they will

The court said that when debt becomes overwhelming, contracts mean nothing.

Aren't you glad that our Republican dominated government has taken care of that in its newly passed Bankruptcy Bill?

ummm ... unless you're thinking about declaring personal bankruptcy.

Contracts only matter if you're on the right side.

Amen!

if you can't pay. They will hound you for the rest of your life.

All the while UAL goes on about it's business with a fresh slate of 3rd world employees brought in on work visas, (don't think that they haven't already explored this one).

When they gave our seats away cuz we weren't to the airport to check in fast enough...and tried to tell us the reservations had been cancelled.

We had to wait for a later (nonstop) flight, which caused them to "frisk us" because of the change in plans (which was, of course, not OUR fault) and THEN they lost our luggage.

A'holes.

My last trip was Air France and was incredibly better in every way.

Flew from Australia to the US round trip on United - biggest mistake I've ever made with the possible exception of marrying my first husband.

Their motto should be "we aren't responsible". It's all we heard. The flights were delayed, overbooked. They left us standing in line to check in at Albany airport for three and a half hours, until well after the time the plane was supposed to take off. While people were standing in a line snaking all through the airport, two of the desk employees decided to go to lunch and left the counter unattended for twenty minutes. When we finally got on the plane, it sat on the tarmac by the runway for another two hours with the pilot occasionally coming on and telling us that they were looking for a de-icing machine. Of course we missed our connection in San Francisco, and United tried to weasel out of putting us up in a hotel. Then, at the end of two days of trying to get on another flight and being in transit, when we finally landed in Sydney and kissed the sweet ground, we found all our brand new luggage had the handles torn off, and that my husband's hardshell Ovation guitar case (reknowned for being pretty much indestructible) had been cracked and splintered. Tried to file a claim - United "wasn't responsible".

All that we heard during the entire thing was how they weren't responsible - for the delays, the missed flight, the attempt to keep from putting us up, the luggage. A number of times we were shouted at and verbally abused by United employees.

The attitude of the employees is indicative of the way they are treated by their management, and that attitude of the management itself. This is the airline that deliberately overbooked flights that they knew, even as they were booked, would never get off the ground, because there weren't enough flight crews to fly them.

Why am I not surprised that they "aren't going to be responsible" for pension plans that employees have worked and paid for over the years either?

:nopity:

:toast:

UAL's CEO Tilton gave himself a $4.5 million pension fund just three months before he put United Airlines into Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in 2002. I don't understand how a bankruptcy Judge can ask the employees to have their vested pensions cut while permitting the CEO to retain his own pension fund intact.

http://www.iamll141.org/ual.htm

"...In recent news articles about additional cost savings, United CEO Glenn Tilton declared there are no sacred cows and everything is on the table. ..."

"...This is the same Glenn Tilton who just collected a $366 thousand bonus and whose $4.5 million personal pension is off the table. So much for a shared sacrifice. ..."

http://www.careerjournal.com/salaryhiring/industries/seniorexecs/20050314-lublin.html

"...But in Mr. Tilton's case, there's a catch: He enjoys a bankruptcy-proof deal that will ease the sting of forsaking his supplemental retirement plan. To entice the oil-industry veteran on board in the fall of 2002, UAL poured $4.5 million into three special trusts set up in his name. His lawyer insisted that the troubled airline cover projected retirement benefits that Mr. Tilton would have earned had he remained a ChevronTexaco Corp. vice chairman until February 2004. ..."

"We felt this was extremely reasonable" in light of "the difficult challenge we faced on the brink of bankruptcy," recalls James J. O'Connor, the UAL director who led the company's CEO search. UAL filed for bankruptcy three months after Mr. Tilton arrived. Meanwhile, he already has taken $3 million in cash out of the trusts, which the bankruptcy court approved. ..."