Joseph Nocera: A powerful 'tool' for controlling labor costs (bankruptcy)

[gulfcoastliberal]

''What do you think when you see so many companies using bankruptcy as a tool to get their labor costs under…''

Frank Lorenzo cut me off in mid-question. ''Tool?'' the chief executive of Continental Airlines practically shouted into the phone. ''When you use that word, you are spinning things, and very unfairly. That's the word the unions always used.

''Bankruptcy is not a tool,'' Lorenzo continued. ''It is a last resort. You have companies that have run out of options in dealing with enormous costs that have made them uncompetitive. Nobody wants to go into bankruptcy. It's the last straw. It's the end of the line. The only thing it's better than is liquidation.'

It seems safe to say that 23 years after Lorenzo first showed the way — 23 years after he took cash-strapped Continental into bankruptcy, ripped up its labor contracts, laid off thousands of workers, hired replacements for its striking pilots and flight attendants, paid them half the old union salaries while insisting they work double the hours, and became in the process the most reviled captain of industry since Jay Gould — it seems safe to say that even after all this time, Lorenzo is still a wee bit sensitive on the subject of using bankruptcy to squeeze costs out of uncompetitive companies.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/16/yourmoney/web.1016mjoe.php

Ahh, the stench of corporate swine.

[Demeter]

1. That's Okay

When there is no working class left, and therefore no mass market, then the US corporate robber barons can take their shoddy merchandise on the world market, and eat it, because no one will buy.

[nvliberal]

2. It'll kill off capitalism.

These idiots who run the multinationals and their political flunkies are so consumed by greed and short-term results, they don't see that the end result of destroying the middle and working classes is the extinction of their own class.

Either that or they set the stage for revolution.