"You have no compassion!" an e-mailer writes. You can guess the subject. The bitter bankruptcy of US Airways. Must workers give back more to keep a sick airline alive• Or must thousands of jobs disappear in shared punishment for a mismanaged company? The advice here has been to deal. Keep US Airways flying. Surprisingly controversial, that view. "You have no concern for workers who are or have lost their homes, can't afford health care for their children," writes an enraged flight attendant. "This is war. I will leave with my head high, knowing that I did my level best to die with dignity." But it is not war. It is competition. Other airlines fly at lower costs. "War" has no place in discussions between management and workers of the same company. Nor can a lower-paying job, even the loss of a job, be compared to death. It is belt-tightening. Ask someone who's really dying if he wouldn't rather just have the challenge of raising household income or cutting costs. Families have done it since time immemorial, name any recession. "Perhaps some of the 'golden parachute' folks of the past could pony up some of their millions," says another angry e-mailer. Many executive contracts have indeed been too sweet. It is a scandal throughout corporate America. But even if weren't a pipedream, a parachute giveback would spread thin: a few hundred dollars per endangered job. Not enough to save an airline. "I don't like losing my benefits and pension. I hate it," says a US Airways veteran. (But) rather than strike and risk that the entire airline goes under, why not walk away if you cannot afford to stay?" Hear, hear. However, as to the lost benefits, pension plans that go under get picked up as a rule by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. And health insurance needn't disappear. There are new wrinkles. Has US Airways, for instance, discovered "Health Savings Accounts?" A deeply anguished company wife writes: "My husband, a captain of 20 years, is (already) paid the equivalent of a youngster at Jet Blue for less than four years. He will have to fly sick because work rules have changed. At 60, he will be forced to retire with about 15 percent of his retirement and no medical coverage after age 65, after putting his life as well as mine into this job. ... The airline industry shareholders (and) lenders have protected their capital by utterly breaking the unions. ... " But airline stocks are drastically down. So how have shareholders protected their capital• And unions are not "broken" when they have to face reality. The benefits promised in the past can't be sustained. When business conditions falter, they drive companies to bankruptcy. No medical coverage after age 65 is exactly why there's something called Medicare. The glass even at US Airways, if it survives, is half full, dear lady, not half empty.

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