Positivity

Most all of the previous posts have started with the idea of why something is not achievable, not the effective way to go about things etc. A decided negativitiy is afoot. This is not my negativity, but the realization that things are not where they should/could be, and that there are factors at work among your representatives, who, propelled by popular concensus, are in the stagnant situation we all find so odious. So it's difficult to be positive. It's not even cool. Doesn't even sound smart. Much easier to throw a rock through a plate glass window than make a plate glass window. And so we fall, all of us, into this negative mindset. A comfortable paradigm of either helpless mutual feelgood or, when that doesn't do it, destructive anger.
We tend to view this management as our previous ones, and this is a mistake in my book. Our past management culture was one of Cut costs/keep it afloat 'til we can outsource it/virtualize it/sell it/leave. Successive CEOs demonstrated an unwavering  belief in this design. This was not just Tilton. IT was Greenwald. It was Wolf. It was every CEO in the past 20 years. This was crime #1 at the board level. Smisek saw this three years ago and and told our guys to get lost when the first overtures were made. Only when contingent upon a gigantic housecleaning, followed by undisputed operational and financial control being granted,  did he return to the table. Why? Because his agenda is different. He and his predecessors at Continental are in the business of running (read: perpetuating you job) an airline.
In the same period that we shrank to 60% our previous maximum size, Continental doubled. Their once paltry list of Foreign destinations now dwarfs ours. They turned profits while we posted losses. They are hiring while we still have 1400+ pilots on the street. They have hired a far greater percentage of employees than us in recent years. They have demonstrated a management culture that, while it may not be Santa-Claus-on-a bicycle, certainly has produced an environment that is more user/employee friendly than ours ever was.
This is what we trash on a daily basis. This what we berate, and in doing so we demonstrate our negativity. Our inability to break a mindset even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is this mindest we have to break if we are ever to have a chance at a decent future.
We need positivity within ourselves or we will truly get, as Wendy puts it "the contract we deserve".