Wow, nice insults.
Sorry no one ever thinks for me or thought, I am a leader not a follower, and why is it ok for the airlines to belong to a union "ATA" and Doug and his band of thieves have contracts, so why is it so wrong for the workers to have that too?
Why dont you explain how WN who has been profitable for over 30 years straight, has the highest paid employees in the industry and they are the highest percentage of unionized workers than any other airline?
You don't have to be a registered member of a socialist party to support socialism. Democrats support socialist policies as a regular part of their platform and many or even most Republicans do the same. If you favor or continue to support Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Unemployment, Food Stamps or any of the other 180 or so means-tested federal wealth redistribution programs, then you or your elected representatives favor socialism over free-market forces in our economic system. Democrats are typically more in favor of these social programs than their marginally less socialistic Republican counterparts. For this and a multitude of other anti-business and anti-free market viewpoints, unions endorse and financially support liberal, socialist policies and the campaigns of liberal democrat policy makers. I'm sure that is what UPN was referring to.
I've explained WN profits on numerous occasions. First off they are a very well-run company on a variety of fronts, most of which their competitors have failed to replicate despite many efforts to do so. WN has a operations model that squeezes maximum efficiencies and utilization of their assets (planes, gates, equipment) far above their average legacy peer. Fast AC turns maximizes the revenue generating potential of each AC and also reduces the number of gates required and the number of employees idly sitting by waiting for the next plane to arrive. These efficiencies are gained by their use a single AC class, their non-reserved and non-premium seating policies, a no-frills approach to catering and amenities, cherry-picking city pairs that can be leveraged with strong yields (not flying to smaller, less profitable markets), staying out of the GDS, and the fact that from day one WN has sought to staff its organization with people who want to work hard and make the company successful. People who don't fit the WN culture are either not hired or don't last very long even if they make it past hiring and training. All of this has added up to a very successful business model for WN and everyone who pays attention knows this.
However, even with all of that going for them, WN has at least one major chink in their armor. That is that WN has made far more in fuel hedge gambles over the past twenty years than they did by the basic accounting model of Revenue-Expenses=Net Income. Those financially positive fuel hedges allowed WN to retain their marketing campaign of being a low fares leader and also to continue to pay their motivated and satisfied labor force better than their competitor airlines who were going through massive restructuring efforts to compete with WN and other low fare airlines who were giving the legacies a pounding in the marketplace with their highly effecient and lower cost structures not burdened down by decades of bloat like DL, UA, AA, US, WN all had to contend with. Take away the fuel hedges from this cost of labor discussion, which is appropriate since we are discussing the ability to pay employees from operating revenues, and WN would have had to make many changes back in the 1990's and 2000's just like the rest of the industry did. Make no mistake, WN is probably a great place to work and it has been very well managed over the years, but luck in fuel hedges is equally responsible for their past few decades of success as is what they have done from an airline operations perspective.