HACECA, EAHSOP, CSOPAH
HAPPENINGS ON MARCH 25th, 2002
Our new, beautiful CRJ700s, Q400s, Boeing 737-700s and
900s. Even with wheels chocked they are living, breathing works of art.
But these machines do a lot more than just please our eyes.
They are the tools of our trade.
And create money. Lots of it. Money that allows people the resources to
love, prosper and live long. So who owns these handsome, essential machines?
Who
are the true owners, the flesh-and-blood ones, not verbiages
of corporations printed on documents posted on bulkheads?
Are corporate executives the true owners of these machines?
No. They professionally manage and rarely outright own the companies they
work for. There’s only a handful of them, yet there are tens of thousands
of employees and potentially millions of customers who live-and-breathe
these machines at Alaska/Horizon. Surely the soul
of ownership resides there.
But true ownership can’t do work philosophically. Employees
and customers have to revive the institution of private property in corporate
equity. Great minds such as John Adams and Leo XIII recognized that the
rights
of property are "sacred and inviolate." Those rights include the
right of an owner to the fruits of his labor and the fruits of his productive
assets.
Accordingly, then, no one, whether a manager, a majority
owner, board directors of a corporation in which shares are held, or government,
has the right to deprive that owner of those fruits without his consent.
(i.e., the wages of labor or the wages of capital or "profits").
Morally, anyone who takes
another’s private property rights to their own bodies or private property
rights of their own productive assets (or share thereof) is
stealing.
A similar analogy of grievous injustice was the institution
of slavery, which deprived some people of private property rights in their
own bodies; all the fruits of the creative efforts of slaves belonged to
the slave owner, not the slave.
The 21st century dawns with human slavery still very much
plaguing the planet. We are all mixtures of good and evil, some more conscious
of their actions than others. But people or institutions that block open
and equal access by workers and customers of owning the machines and tools
they use to do work and consume, and instead chain workers to pay by hourly-wages
only, are frankly--evil.
People with vested stakes in the current unjust system,
such as corporate officers and managers, union leaders and educators of
academia, who act to perpetuate this injustice, hold back all of human
kind. What we need in this country is the Second
American Revolution—this one an assault on the perpetuation of hourly-wage
slavery onto the masses.
In the airline industry, the human labor of mechanics
who own their personal tools is meaningless without access to the aircraft.
What is a pilot without their cockpits? What is a flight attendant without
their galleys? What is a ramper without their tugs and ramp equipment?
What are reservation and passenger service agents without their computers
to join our customers to these marvelous machines of our dreams so they
all can freely and affordably travel?
They are nothing.
So beware of any person or group who advocates or promotes
distance between us and our capital equipment. The key is closer proximity.
Hugged your airplane today? Patted it gently on the nose? Rubbed its fuselage?
These are OURS!
Just laws assure peace among diverse peoples. So now we
must complete the legal process of asserting the oldest of all human rights--ownership.
But not just to our bodies, but to the capital assets
that are an extension of our flesh.
It will take work and cooperation. It will take time and patience. Many
compassionate people are working on this paradigm shift now. (We could
use a lot more help.)
Meanwhile, take care of our tools. Be gentle with them.
Never forget their importance. They create the money for us to hoist lattes
toasting the intimate connection between workers and our
natural partners--customers. They create the money to fix our cars,
buy homes, put kids through college, and pay for well-earned retirements
when that day eventually comes for all of us.
It’s a righteous process we all collectively partake of
and play an individual part in. Do it well and when the future arrives
you won’t even notice. Moment by moment life will be fully
vested for all to enjoy—Steve Nieman, President of the Horizon/Alaska
Customer/Employee Co-Ownership Association, AAG shareholder, Horizon employee
and QXTeamster