Archive

Posts Tagged ‘airline industry’
March 18th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Self-Serving Labor Unions Threaten to Kill Budding Airline Recovery
Posted by Print

The U.S. airline industry is slowly recovering from a worldwide recession and severe downturn in travel volume, and hasn’t completely righted course since the catastrophic 9/11 attacks.

So what do you if you’re a labor union representing employees of that struggling industry?  Threaten to strike and kill it off for good, apparently.

In recent weeks, union bosses representing airline employees are demanding pay increases and costlier benefits, even as the economy continues to shed jobs and unemployment remains stubbornly high.  They may also strike for the first time at a major U.S. carrier since 2005, despite rising fuel costs as summer approaches.

Few things illustrate the dramatic distinction between workers’ interests and labor unions’ interests than the unions’ continuing destructive behavior.  They have nearly killed the domestic automobile industry through decades of unsustainable demands, and states such as Michigan decay while employers hire in friendlier states.  Big Labor’s apologists like to argue that they provide better jobs and benefits to everyday workers, but the sad truth is that they kill jobs or drive them overseas, leaving unemployed workers and decaying communities to pay the price.

Hopefully, union leaders and the everyday workers whose livelihoods they control will regain sobriety rather than do to domestic airlines what they did for domestic automakers…