Our battle for retirement security included exhaustive efforts in the courts, on Capitol Hill and at the bargaining table. Within the context of bankruptcy and today's political climate, this agreement provides a foundation of retirement security for flight attendants.

Retirement funds are the security that you're building up over the course of your working years and you don't want to put them in jeopardy. So if a person is going to do that, they should really make sure that the payback is there, that the means of paying back the loan is there.

Ratification of this replacement pension plan ends our yearlong fight in the courts, on Capitol Hill and at the bargaining table. Our persistence and solidarity more than doubled the company's original proposal to provide a foundation of retirement security upon which we will build when we share in our airline's success.

Executives have richly rewarded themselves. In medieval times, people guilty of this kind of greed would have been boiled in oil.

We really need to think about four pillars for retirement. ... The first pillar is Social Security. The second is individual pensions or savings. The third is health insurance, very important. And the fourth, surprisingly, is the continued ability to earn, because many people are going to need to find some way of bringing in earnings after they pass normal retirement age, and we think that that should be more and more emphasized in terms of getting ready for that possibility.

Social Security is not a retirement savings plan; it is a social insurance program. It's a contract that says, as a society, we will look out for you and your family when you can no longer work.