Thursday, August 11, 2005
Where am I? (And a note on airlines and their unions)
Milwaukee. Having also been in Detroit, Kansas City and Chicago since Tuesday morning. Going to Minneapolis this afternoon, and then home tonight unless the thunderstorms and Northwest Airlines mechanics do not conspire to trap me in the Twin Cities.
Why do I mention Northwest's mechanics? Because they are agitating for a better deal, and my anecdotal observation is that Northwest has had to cancel a larger than usual number of flights for reasons seemingly unrelated to weather. The mechanics can't strike lawfully until August 20, but that doesn't mean they can't be tirelessly and tiresomely by-the-book before authorizing an aircraft for flight. Northwest, and its passengers, are getting the message. The Northwest mechanics are probably going to inconvenience a lot of people in the next few weeks. I'm just hoping that I'm not one of them. More below on this topic.
The silly thing is that Northwest, like all the hub-and-spoke airlines, is dead in the long run anyway. Jet Blue and Southwest prove that you can make money flying, but only if you do at least two things right: you need to lose the unions, as much for the work rules as for the wages, and you need to use your capital -- the leased jets -- very efficiently. It turns out that networked route systems keep their planes in the air a lot more than hub-and-spoke systems, so the upstarts have a huge advantage in cost of capital. The problem, though, is that the big guys are trapped. Imagine how hard it would be as a matter of both business and corporate politics for Continental to decide to abandon Newark, or Northwest to abandon Minneapolis? Yet they have to.
Back to union tactics. Outside of the public sector teachers unions, is there any doubt that the most disruptive unions of recent years have been airline employees, particularly the pilots? As tough as their tactics are on airline stockholders, union actions have a devastating impact on passengers. Because of the hub-and-spoke system, many passengers have no choice of airline as a practical matter. If you want to get in or out of Minneapolis, Northwest is your only, er, "option." As a result, the actions of airline unions burden consumers much more than those of auto unions or steelworkers or coal miners. I submit, for your consideration in the comments section, that airline unions have contributed mightily to the massive decline in popular support for industry labor unions generally.
1 Comments:
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Thu Aug 11, 09:28:00 AM:
Hiya Hawk,
You're quite the getabout, eh? Flying all over the show.
I'm writing today not to voice my support for the work that labor unions do in advocating for blue collar Americans, but to thank you for your excellent blogroll.
I use your list often, and I think it's one of the best rolls in blogtopia. Thanks.
