CHICKENS DON’T CARE

WIN AND LIVE TOGETHER OR DIE ALONE
OUR FUTURE REQUIRES LOOKING AFTER ONE ANOTHER

Years ago when I was a young adult living in the South Pacific I was invited to a chicken dinner. When I arrived for the evening dinner I was surprised to find out that part of the preparation for the meal was for me to pick out a couple of plump birds for the plucking.

Picking out a couple of ‘hapless victims’ was the easy part; dispatching them was a bit more challenging but necessary and with some regret I did the dirty deed. What I noticed about those chickens that weren’t chosen taught me a lesson in ‘chicken nature.’ As long as they weren’t picked up to be plucked, they didn’t seem to care much what happened to their fellow chickens.

They were oblivious to the whole ritual. I think back to those chickens each time Delta says that sacrificing some will save us all. Each time Delta has closed cities or done away with departments and jobs over the years, the thinking from fellow Delta employees has always been the same; well, at least I still have a job! We don’t seem to care or even worry when jobs go away and we walk away from the ‘night’s meal’ glad we weren’t on the menu.

Here’s one almost certain fact; sooner or later we will be served up on a platter if we think we can survive Delta’s managerial miscues and future plans individually. We will be sacrificed and those left to carry on will breathe a sigh of relief and probably won’t care about us. It is a weakness of the Delta workforce and one that has been exploited for decades by our management team.

To survive this economy and this aggressive and money gluttonous management team requires that we change our thinking and our individual survival instincts and strengthen our position by starting to care about each other. Our perspective shouldn’t be thinking about keeping our individual jobs but in realizing saving a department through unionization will likely secure all of our futures and our collective jobs.

The ‘unique culture’ that Richard Anderson talks about and inherited is our almost serene and silent compliance to whatever Delta management dictates. This ‘attribute’ that most Delta employees seem to have in their DNA is a major collective character flaw going forward and this CEO will exploit our ‘culture’ to achieve victory and then not risk another union fight in the future by moving against all of us should we lose this union campaign.

We win now or no matter how you feel about unionization; no matter your loyalty to the Widget or how you vote in the coming election we will all be scooped up and ‘served’ for dinner.

He has done it in the past when he could and was only stopped by strong unions with iron-clad contracts in the past. This management team will not differentiate between those that supported them and those that didn’t. The ramp will be completely farmed out or forever changed into jobs no one with a family and obligations can afford to keep. It’s time to care for one another; don’t be a chicken! Let’s unionize!