Something Special In The Error

American Airlines is solving its bankruptcy problem by pulling the eject lever on 13,000 current employees and cutting health and retirement benefits for tens of thousands more.

The parent of American Airlines wants to eliminate about 13,000 jobs — 15 percent of its workforce — as the nation's third-biggest airline remakes itself under bankruptcy protection.

The company proposes to end its traditional pension plans, a move strongly opposed by the airline's unions and the U.S. pension-insurance agency, and to stop paying for retiree health benefits.

AMR Corp. said Wednesday that it must cut labor costs by 20 percent. It will soon begin negotiations with its three major unions, but the president of the flight attendants' union quickly rejected the company's ideas as unacceptably harsh.

CEO Thomas W. Horton said Wednesday that the company hopes to return to profitability by cutting spending by more than $2 billion per year and raising revenue by $1 billion per year.

AMR lost $884 million in the first nine months of 2011, and $904 million for December alone. It has lost more than $11 billion since 2001.

"We are going to use the restructuring process to make the necessary changes to meet our challenges head-on and capitalize fully on the solid foundation we've put in place," Horton said in a letter to employees.

AMR's 88,000 employees have braced for bad news for weeks. 

And boy, did they get it.  American is vowing if the unions don't eat these massive job cuts, the company will have all union contracts tossed in bankruptcy court and cut the jobs anyway.  They also want unions to drop pensions and go to 401(k) plans and want further health benefit cost-cutting for retirees...and all indications are they'll get every single one of those "requests" from labor because American at this point has no real reason not to go to a bankruptcy judge and demand the abrogation of all union contracts.  Laws passed by Congress and President Bush have seen to that.

The assault on workers in the US continues, and the country is being told that getting rid of these awful, evil, despicable unions is the first step towards job creation.  That's true.  It just means those jobs won't be created in the US.