The Federal Bailout of the airlines and our role as employees and customers of the AAG

[Dan Bell <dbell@kent.edu>]

Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 14:00:21 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time)
From: "Vic Thorpe" <just.solutions@pandora.be>
To: <dbell@kent.edu>
Subject: Re: COGALL: The Federal Bailout of the airlines and our role as employees and customers of the AAG

-------Original Message-------
From: Dan Bell
Date: 20 September 2001 13:58:40
To: cogall@cog.kent.edu
Subject: COGALL: The Federal Bailout of the airlines and our role as
employees and customers of the AAG


Dan,

Can you post this also on the 'Organised Labor' discussion site,  please?

Vic


From: "Steve Nieman, President" <haceca@home.com>
Subject: The Federal Bailout of the airlines and our role as employees and customers of the AAG
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 07:02:50 -0700

HACECA, EAHSOP, CSOPAH HAPPENINGS ON SEPT. 19th, 2001

Employees and passengers--nows our chance. Thought owning airlines was for only the golden gilded like Howard Hughes or Carl Icahn? Or employees would have to spend billions in wage concessions like United Airline workers did? Maybe not. Nows our chance to get a combined much larger share of ownership via the contemplated federal bailout of the US airlines including Alaska/Horizon.

Everybody remembers the Chrysler debacle, right? The federal government bailed it out (pencil in we taxpayers did) and now that company is owned overseas by Daimler Benz. DaimlerChrysler announced last January that it will eliminate 26,000 jobs, or one out of every five white- and blue-collar jobs at its Chrysler Group in the US. And the UAW-represented workers didnt have one iota of input or control over either decision or earn one capital-side dime (besides profit sharing). DaimlerChrysler accounts for 4 percent of the US gross domestic product.

Will a taxpayer funded bailout of the US airlines be different? From the lessons learned from Chrysler--it should be!! If Congress uses taxpayer money to aid private, deregulated airlines, what should be the upside for taxpayers? Stock. Stock in those airlines.

I called James Hoffas office in Washington D.C. and left a message urging the Teamsters to get on the stock bandwagon. Contact your union representatives. Contact management of AS/QX. Contact any shareholder of the AAG you know. This is a serendipitous opportunity to finally get justice for the true stakeholders--employees and customers--into larger stock ownership of Alaska and Horizon.

There are always silver linings to any event no matter how catastrophic: one of lifes spontaneous workings. The horrible events in New York and Washington D.C. may have triggered an ESOP/Co-OP earthquake that could break open a democratization of capital and capital credit for the masses. No doubt the terrorist attacks were religiously motivated. But it was most certainly economic terrorism, too. One percent of the worlds humans control 99 percent of the wealth.

As anybody whos ever punched a time clock has figured out--you will never make ends meet on hourly-only wages. This is the modern days form of human slavery. Everyone must be able to appropriately share in the economies of scale of capital-side payouts, and you can only access the end of that rainbow through stock ownership. Ownership of large capital institutions like airlines.

And more ownership means more power sharing. Board seats occupied by employees and customers to guide the companys future. No more smoke and mirrors. Everyone can see how the money is earned and spent, so we can all truly learn our business and understand it first hand.

The airline executives are in Washington D. C. right now holding their hands out. They want this money with no strings attached. But business is business. And justice is justice. Our hard earned tax dollars are poised again to go sailing out the window. Whether youre an employee, investor, or customer--and we certainly are all taxpayers--give us our equity stake! President Bush, tie this money to broader ownership--Steve Nieman, President of the Horizon/Alaska Customer/Employee Co-Ownership Association, AAG shareholder, Horizon employee and QXTeamster

The Horizon/Alaska Customer/Employee Co-Ownership Assn. (HACECA) Inc's website is <http://www.eahsop.org>www.eahsop.org


--
Dan Bell
International Program Coordinator
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242
(330) 672-0333 << New direct number!
(330) 672-4063 fax
dbell@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/
http://cog.kent.edu