Winglet:
We're all entitled to our own individual political opinions, and maybe I am naive, but I just don't get the connection between airline union emasculation and the White House. I really don't.
How is the GOP after unions? They haven't introduced any legislation to repeal the RLA, they haven't started making sounds supporting a nationwide Right-to-work law, and as far as I know the labor protecting provisions of taft-Hartkey are still intact. With a Republican majority in both houses of congress, if they were after labor, I don't think there would be any ambiguity.
I think the whole industry mess is more a function of management than any governmental or labor action or inaction. Let's look at this objectively.....airlines are losing money because their overall model is broken. The hub and spoke works great when people lack the ability to comparison shop on their own. When folks used to call a travel agency to do their booking, the flights were sorted by enroute time and time of day. Most people generally pick the first option presented to them....so flights that had a 27 minute connection at DFW (never mind the fact they come in one terminal and out another) would show up at the top of the list. Due to years and years of regulated prices, not that many people would inquire as to the price of said ticket.
The evolution of the internet gave consumers the power to shop aroound. Once they could shop around, they were much less willing to take it in the shorts with regard to airfare.
Once revenue fell due to the change in consumer habits, airlines had two choices: change or die. Most of them, for whatever reason, have elected not to change.
The evisceration of employee wages and associated weakening of ther collective bargaining organizations is really only a stopgap measure. Those things have reduced the rate at which money is lost, but the overall problem is a broken, inefficient system.
Who is making money? Southwest. Is it the result of a non-union shop and low wages? Hardly...their folks are well paid and their workforce is highly organized.
Back to the moral of my post: George W. & Laura are not sitting around, drinking coffee, and figuring out ways to bust unions. They have nore important fish to fry. Frankly, I think it is going to take a union to shut an airline or two down before management gets the message that people are mad as hell and won't take it any more. The labor groups at USAirways, whom I thought would put up a fight of some sort, basically rolled over like a lap dog and told management to do anything they wish.
Some folks might think that they are better off with some job at a more-or-less going concern than they would be shutting the thing down and having to start from scratch. I'm not so sure. But it is incredibly apparent that until a union or group of unions at a carrier stand up and say "Nope, shut 'er down" that management is going to keep trying to dqueeze enough from employees to compensate for their failure.
And the government really should play "hands off." Let the marketplace work, let a carrier go out of business.
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