Jeff @ CAL and merger stance...

[densoo]

"I understand [workers] want more out of life here and they deserve more out of life here. But no matter what you want and deserve, unless there is money to pay you, there is no money to pay you."

Talk about a shot across the bow. He's loudly said he's not taking any pay or bonus this year, but his incentive program? Not so much....

Smisek was paid $1.4 million under an incentive program that rewards executives for the company's performance over the previous three years. Monday's regulatory filing said Smisek's pledge to forego salary and bonus would not affect future payments under incentive programs. http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/01/continental_airlines_ceo_refus.htmlhttp://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2010/01/continental_airlines_ceo_refus.html

On 60 Minutes, Steve Croft interviewed Michael Lewis who wrote "The Big Short, Inside the Doomsday Machine" about the Wall Street collapse. Aside from the fact that one private investor saw it coming in 2005 and started betting against the bundled mortgages (and made $725M), this was one of the best put statements I've heard in a long time:

Wall Street is able to delude itself because it's paid to delude itself. One of the lessons of this story is that people see what they're incentivized to see. If you pay someone not to see the truth they will not see the truth. You have to be very careful how you incentivize people because they well respond to the incentives.

Execs are incentivized to take as much from labor as they can in pay, retirement, health benefits, and even jobs. What they take builds their mansions and buys their yachts. The delusion that they are doing what is right goes right up to the Goldman Sachs rep in London saying he is "doing the work of God."

Don't believe it? Here's the interview. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907681.ece

 

[njcapt]

Kind of a derail, but this Matt Taibbi article associates the actions of Goldman Sachs and the other big investment firms and old time street hustlers. Very well done.

The article speaks to the actions of incentivation.

 

[HHH]

It's a brilliant management team. .

More like greedy, unethical, and selfish. Contrary to the aforementioned and typical "cop out" argument, the job of management is NOT to rape, pillage, and piss of its' employee groups in exchange for $$$. Competent, successful, and ethical managers understand the importance of their "co-workers" and treat them with TRUE dignity and respect. They understand that fellow coworkers hold similar if not a greater interest in the company and its' well being than stockholders, upper management, etc.

 

[HHH]

Straight-talker takes to the skies

"I never pat staff on the back and tell them everything is going to be OK if it is not," he says. "You could say I am a little blunt but . . . it comes with integrity and honesty.".

Smisek,
You pontificate that you are a blunt, candid, and honest straight shooter. To be blunt and candid, your greed and arrogance is appalling and lacks any integrity or honesty. You have been paid over $17 million dollars in recent years while the "staff" that actually make CAL an airline have worked under pay cuts in an understaffed and continually deteriorating environment. You have been paid MILLIONS while CAL sells almost all of its product and STILL loses money. In August of last year your predecessor cried that CAL will have to lay off ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED employees to save $100 million. Later that year that ONE person was "compensated" almost $22 million. You have been part of a team that "mis"-led CAL to lose almost one billion dollars, yet have taken MILLIONS from the company. That same "team" has displayed ZERO integrity in splicing, ignoring, and abusing the pathetic CBA that the CAL pilot group are enduring. Now you say to those that have been sacrificing while you have prospered that they must sacrifice longer and harder. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Your haughty and misleading claim to forgo your salary may fool the useful idiots of blog world, but not the tired, disgusted, and pissed off front line "staff" at CAL - especially the pilot group. This CAL pilot, and thousands of others will burn this place down before ever approving anything worth a penny less than the proposal that was recently submitted by CALALPA. I have no fear of a bankruptcy, merger, or any other threats that you can create.

PS Stop whining about scope. All CAL flying needs to be flown by pilots on the CAL seniority list.

 

[CiFIknow]

I'm at Express and hope that CALALPA does not cave one inch as far as scope is concerned. I am a commuter and made it a hobby to count and underline the term "co-workers" in Kellner's monthly letter in every Continental magazine on my ride to and from work. By the way, my record was eight times. I can understand using a corporate "buzz word" maybe once in a while, but eight times in a one-page letter?? Give me a break. By the way, the term "co-worker" was never used less than three times in any of Kellner's letters in Continental Magazine.

I was curious to see how Smisek would approach his letters in the magazine and notice that instead of a full page letter, his consists of one column in english and the second column is the spanish version. And, he has yet to mention the term "co-worker" more or less than once in his short letters.

I know this is completely inane, but maybe Jeff gives less of a sh!t about his "co-workers" than Larry did. And we all know how much Larry "cared".

 

[densoo]

More like greedy, unethical, and selfish. Contrary to the aforementioned and typical "cop out" argument, the job of management is NOT to rape, pillage, and piss of its' employee groups in exchange for $$$. Competent, successful, and ethical managers understand the importance of their "co-workers" and treat them with TRUE dignity and respect. They understand that fellow coworkers hold similar if not a greater interest in the company and its' well being than stockholders, upper management, etc.

In a completely free market it is management's job to make the most profit for the least cost. There is no greed, ethics, or altruism. There is only money. The "true dignity and respect" that you speak of is simply a tool to gain greater productivity at a lower cost. Until they get the employees to work for free--and be happy about it--they've failed at their job. Everything else is socialism.

Unless the employees realize this, they will always be taken of advantage of. There are many fine individuals in the workplace, bosses and peers alike. But this can't be confused with the company. The company as an entity is amoral. It exists to make money for the owner or shareholder and the employee is an obstacle to that goal.

There are no more secretaries because the computer could replace them. There are no more FEs because black boxes could replace them. When they find a way to replace a human being with a machine, they do and they will. People are a necessary evil in a company. If they can be replaced, they will be. When they can convince the traveling public that a single pilot airliner is safe, they'll do it. No pilot, they'll do it.

A CEO's latest statement: "there is no money to pay you."

 

[CiFIknow]

In a completely free market it is management's job to make the most profit for the least cost. There is no greed, ethics, or altruism. There is only money. The "true dignity and respect" that you speak of is simply a tool to gain greater productivity at a lower cost. Until they get the employees to work for free--and be happy about it--they've failed at their job. Everything else is socialism.

Unless the employees realize this, they will always be taken of advantage of. There are many fine individuals in the workplace, bosses and peers alike. But this can't be confused with the company. The company as an entity is amoral. It exists to make money for the owner or shareholder and the employee is only a necessary evil to accomplish that goal.

Thus the irony in the term "co-worker". Insulting to those who look beyond the fluff don't drink the "secret sauce".

 

[mamba20]

Make no mistake about it, Jeff is no friend to pilots. Right now, he is our sworn enemy.

 

[HHH]

In a completely free market it is management's job to make the most profit for the least cost. There is no greed, ethics, or altruism. There is only money. The "true dignity and respect" that you speak of is simply a tool to gain greater productivity at a lower cost. Until they get the employees to work for free--and be happy about it--they've failed at their job. Everything else is socialism.

Unless the employees realize this, they will always be taken of advantage of. There are many fine individuals in the workplace, bosses and peers alike. But this can't be confused with the company. The company as an entity is amoral. It exists to make money for the owner or shareholder and the employee is an obstacle to that goal.

There are no more secretaries because the computer could replace them. There are no more FEs because black boxes could replace them. When they find a way to replace a human being with a machine, they do and they will. People are a necessary evil in a company. If they can be replaced, they will be. When they can convince the traveling public that a single pilot airliner is safe, they'll do it. No pilot, they'll do it.

A CEO's latest statement: "there is no money to pay you."

We do not live in a completely free market. The best economic system ever devised by man is capitalism. However, because people are inherently flawed, pure capitalism needs certain boundaries. Unfortunately, as those operating within the system drift away from a moral compass there needs to be greater boundaries enacted to protect the integrity of the system. BTW Socialism is NOT the solution.

Most if not all successful companies treat their employees with dignity and respect and as an essential member of the company. Those that have not figured this out (and operate within your oversimplified paradigm) are in a continuous cycle of struggle and hardship. As I always encourage those that believe in the false hope of liberalism - just look at the facts of history.

BTW Your first paragraph sounds like the pathetic mantra of current corporate leadership. Sorry, but that simply does not and has never been a viable and successful long term strategy. More importantly, those societies that fall away from ethics and morals always end up becoming insignificant.

 

[NEDude]

Unless the employees realize this, they will always be taken of advantage of. There are many fine individuals in the workplace, bosses and peers alike. But this can't be confused with the company. The company as an entity is amoral. It exists to make money for the owner or shareholder and the employee is an obstacle to that goal.

That is the mindset of failing companies. Most successful companies, that I have seen anyways, tend to view their employees as the tools by which they make money. This is espescially true in customer service oriented companies. Unfortunately they do not teach this in most MBA programs now. Which is why most truly succesful and innovative companies are founded by, and run by, people with little to no formal business education.

BTW I think it would be interesting to compare the decline of the American business to the rise in MBA prgrams. I bet there is a link.