As long as they're not recognized by the NMB or the company as being a collective bargaining unit, they're a union in name only (sort of like the TWU?).
Personally, I think the agents are flirting with visions of grandeur which will lead to disaster. Not to spread fear or cast aspersions, but they're probably the most replaceable group that a customer comes in contact with, and even there, coming in contact with an agent is becoming the exception more than the norm.
I flew today on a connection via DFW. The only interaction I had with an agent was at my upline station because I was able upgrade (it hadn't cleared in advance). At DFW, the backdrop told me the upgrade wasn't able to be cleared on that segment, so I didn't need to talk to anyone there aside from the rep at the Club.
On the previous two trips before that (day trips to ORD and DFW), I used web check-in and didn't even have to talk to anyone at all.
Granted, two of those three trips were clear weather days. My ORD trip had a five hour delay, but the entire delay was spent up in the club, with FIDS giving us our revised departure time(s).
My point... kiosks are already doing almost all of what express check-in agents used to do. With each new release (quarterly), self-service gets better and better. Likewise with AA.Com and its impact on Res. I'm not saying that agents (res or airport) will ever be eliminated, but it certainly isn't anywhere near as complex as the job I was hired to do 21 years ago.
If the ASPA really thinks they can wield a lot of power over the company, they need a reality check. All they're doing is providing motivation for AA to keep working on products like kiosks and improving AA.Com so that they can continue to attrit out agents as they've done for the past 10 years. Perhaps having a union 10 years ago might have slowed that down a bit, but the unions at NWA, ALK, and TWA, all of whom were represented by unions 10 years ago, weren't able to prevent advances in customer facing technology from taking over their jobs.
The advances in sales automation aren't limited to just the agents, either. Look at agencies, and the impact that eticketing had on them. Previously, the fact that a paper ticket had to be issued gave them the ability to demand 10% commissions. Today, no ticket, no justification for commissions.
GDS's also thought that they could command huge booking fees from the airlines, because 1) they owned the systems the agencies were using to extort their 10% commissions, and 2) Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet. Today, the big GDS's (Sabre, Amadeus, Worldspan, Galileo) have all had to reinvent themselves because the bookable transactions are on the decline. Up to now, the GDS's response has been to raise booking fees to offset the decline in volume. That no longer works, so the GDS's are about to pay the piper. Sabre already went private, and is going to see some radical changes as a result. Galileo and Worldspan are in the process of merging, and again, are seeing radical changes. Amadeus is privately held as well, and is more and more positioning themselves as an IT shop than a GDS.
So....
To bring this back around to airport and res agents.
The union can't stop people from buying tickets on the internet, and it's unlikely that any union would be able to turn the tide with regard to people checking in via the internet or from using kiosks.
Whatever they do, they need to be a little smarter in understanding and leveraging how they provide value to the company, and what's reasonable to expect in return. Believing that they have the power to shut down the airline isn't exactly realistic.
