Union Worker Protests 'Greedy' American Airline Execs With YouTube Song & Dance

Since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011, American Airlines has been looking for a way to reorganize its finances. One proposed method involves a $1.25 billion reduction in annual labor cost and scraping union contracts.

Obviously, this has not gone over well with union members and the matter has been taken to court. However, there won't be any decision until next week.

“A judge on Thursday postponed a ruling on whether to throw out contracts covering thousands of unionized workers at bankrupt American Airlines,” according to Reuters.

“Judge Sean Lane of the New York bankruptcy court was set to rule on Friday on the airline's motion to abrogate terms covering pilots, flight attendants, and certain ground workers at the No. 3 carrier,” the report adds.

Frustrated that unions might lose, one America Airlines flight attendant decided to protest what he thinks is an unfair deal (i.e. that union workers lose their coverage while top executives keep their pay) buy making a video parody of that god-awful Village People song "YMCA."

Here’s the video’s YouTube description:

This video is a tribute to all hard working people who have been wronged by corporate greed. The song YAAY (Why American Airlines Why?) is a fun and creative way of expressing labor's displeasure with the hundreds of millions of dollars of bonus money awarded to top executives at American Airlines over the last decade.

Meanwhile, American was spiraling toward bankruptcy with management pointing the finger at labor. Make no mistake, we have no problem with bonuses when good, sound business decisions lead to a profitable airline and morale is high. We do have a problem when employees are told they must take wage cuts and other concessions to stay out of bankruptcy but no such concessions were taken at the highest level.

The video has caught some media attention.

“This is the future. Picket lines are the 70s, 80s, and 90s,” the video’s creator American Airlines flight attendant Robert Hearn told CBS DFW.

“In this video you have three employees and three frequent flyers that kind of united together and had some fun and made a fun creative way to get our point across to management; that we’re not happy having the finger pointed to us whenever things go south,” Hearn said.

And now we have this song stuck in our head. Great.