The blame game

Sir Joshua Reynolds, advisor and mentor to Thomas Edison , once said "There is no end to which man will not resort to avoid the true labour of thinking". Unfortunately this is all too true in our world, from the entitlement minded caucus that believes someone else should pay for their own responsibilities, to here at United  where employees can reduce all ills to a convenient blame on management.
It's wrong. It's destructive. It's easy. And like all good lies, it's partly true.
How did we get here? How did we become infected with this cancerous desire to tear down the very institution that pays our salary?
It was I think, in part, a failing akin to that described by Reynolds. We were confronted with a complicated situation we did not understand, many years ago (the declining industry margins and therefore the need to cut costs/salaries). We blamed management. We fought and became obstructionist. This was reciprocated in kind by management and we were treated as pariahs. Adversaries who needed to be marginalized. We responded. (It did of course, not help, that our management culture was focussed on asset trading as opposed to operations, and so our importance was discounted by them). The cycle of distrust, hate, and mutual disrespect was in place and here we are today.
Lack of critical thinking on our part allowed us to ignore our part in constructing this state of affairs. Our collective ego allowed us to see it as a management plot, something to which they were archetypically predisposed, something they stayed up all night conceiving. It was ALL about us.
In fact, management 's duty is to the financial health of the company, and for better or worse, they will attempt to address that. An operation that is inefficient is not as attractive to a manager. Money must be made elsewhere. Assets shuffling. Financial arms that play with cash flow dollars and create secondary investments. Things that don't require, me, you, the worker, to be here.
Back in the 80s Continental was an odious place to work. Lorenzo had cobbled together a disparate group of tired, broken down airlines, fractious employee groups, bankruptcy detritus, and become the bane of the industry. The government called him out and for his deliberate asset stripping  he was banished. Quite rightly. Bethune, a Boeing manager, was on the board of CAL specifically  to look after Boeing's assets. He took charge and, the rest is history. Why did he not outsource, shrink, asset shuffle his way to profitability? Was he more noble than Frank or any of our past CEOs? I think not. He was a manager faced with an operation that COULD be profitable. Operationally profitable. Largely in part because even though the employees at Continental were at each other's throats, (and management's also) they were CHEAP. This incentivized him as an operations manager to concentrate on ......operations! This required instilling employee faith. This was done by growing the airline, creating forward motion in seniority and hence pay, increasing job security prospects, (e.g. buying in house commuter airlines) rewarding effort, punishing laziness and ineptitude, (i.e. demanding efficiency in response to financial incentive) and putting the company where it is today. It is that legacy that is managing us right now.
Unfortunately the new hires at Continental, over the last ten years, are largely ignorant of this culture and feel impervious to the consequences of disowning it. They, like us, fall easily into the jaded, lazy mindest of: "If I don't have it, it must be management's conspiratorial obsession with trying to screw me". They, like us, are inspiring management to look for other revenue sources. Ones that don't include you.
This is why we don't have a contract. It is a philosophical divide that I fear will not be bridged, and the consequences of that, as we all know, are not in our best interests.
We MUST, for our own sakes, offer management something that benefits THEM. I know what we want. I know what you want. What we must realize is what management wants, without resorting to the oft held platitudes of: they want to screw me/steal all they can/ruin the job. etc. etc. etc. Think for a second. If they want to RUN an airline, they need you. Don't marginalize yourselves and make them change their minds.