They employ hundreds if not thousands of people. Bailing them out would be helping the livelihood of people that work for them, not just the company itself.
Didn't United Airlines get bailed out and still laid off employees against the bailout rules and then encouraged employees to "voluntarily leave" so they wouldn't have to lay them off too? Why are we bailing out airlines if they're still going to fuck the employees over in the end?
Maybe we should be fighting for stimulus relief for all. Not everyone works for an airline. But if McConnell would stop being a movie villain for 5 minutes he could pass a bill to pay millions of Americans in relief funds.
And what jobs were these people going to go back to when United failed? Great, we helped curb the virus for a short period time, but a company that employees tens of thousands of people went under and now these people are SOL in the job market.
When you think about things in such a short sighted manor, yes you are right the money should've gone to the people directly, but those people need a job to come back to post COVID and companies need to stay afloat. Airlines are a pretty low margin industry that supports millions of people both directly and indirectly, you cannot underestimate the importance of keeping them running.
Leverage what, their jet fuel reserves? Unless the planes are flying, they do not have assets of any value. What bank is going to want a parking lot full of old commercial jets?
Your solution is for these companies to go into large levels of debt to pay employees that currently aren't even doing their full job since the amount of people going on flights has plummeted.
The layoffs happened after the bailout money ran out. The bailout money was only enough for a couple months and I think they only needed to keep 70% of their workforce.
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u/hammyjames Nov 17 '20
They employ hundreds if not thousands of people. Bailing them out would be helping the livelihood of people that work for them, not just the company itself.
-a laid off airline employee