"tell me about a single company that now a days care about employees."

I suggest you read the article in today's New York Times about Wall Street Bonuses before answering that question.

But, I agree that many don't.

I understand that this was not an official union sanctioned sick out, but there was a lot of internet chatter about "we'll show them" during this time of negotiations & impending bankruptcy.

A lot of innocent travelers got their Holidays ruined. This should be thoroughly investigated, and if wrongdoings are found, someone needs to go to jail, and a lot of people need to be fired!! That's just my personal opinion.

Some facts to bear in mind before pointing that finger of blame:

-- This is US Airways' second bankruptcy in recent history (what? Two or three years?), and its survival chances are not great at best.

-- The flight attendants that everyone is so quick to disparage are not teenagers who couldn't get work at McDonald's. Their primary goal is the safe arrival of the passengers in the plane, and they are trained in this task. Beverage service is actually secondary to knowing how to use emergency exits, deploy life rafts manually, give emergency (minimal) medical care, etc. US Airways' FAs have high industry seniority, but still don't get great pay, and management is always quick to slash their salaries first. Could YOU get by, with your current expenses, if your bosses cut your pay 20-40%?

-- Pilots at the upper echelons of SOME airlines do get paid well. But they have to have many, many years as Captains of the largest airliners to reach that salary level. Most pilots are in the vast underpaid middle of that food chain, and pilots flying regional planes are paid starvation wages (less than $30,000 a year in some cases). And they are often on the hook in those first couple of years for ongoing training, uniforms, etc.

So the people primarily responsible for our safety are paid essentially nothing and get those meager wages slashed, while their managers (whose primary responsibility is maintaining the company's stock price) don't cut their own vast salaries in response to the same "hard times".

Is anyone surprised hourly employee morale is non-existent? Their sick hours are just about the last benefit they have, and they used them because they have nothing else to lose. Even if US Airways limps on, they'll probably manage to eliminate all union jobs, throwing all the hourly employees out anyway.