Anyone who follows this industry is well aware of labor problems at many US and European airlines.  There have been at least three major strikes I can think of in the last month in Europe (BA, Lufthansa and Olympic).  American Airlines seems to have had almost its entire operations labor force at the negotiating table for the past 4 years and not a one of them seem to be acting like a deal is soon to be had with several threatening to ask for release from negotiations to begin a 30 day cooling period and one (the TWU) who has asked for such a release. 

Even Southwest Airlines has had a couple of snags in the past year with its pilots union and their TWU local.   Delta’s flight attendants are making noise about trying to unionize again and this time they may have the votes for it when you consider that Northwest’s flight attendants were rabidly unionized.  Frontier employees haven’t rebelled yet but I kind of wonder if that isn’t closer to happening than many realize given Republic Airways’ direction.

US Airways has problems with its pilots’ unions not being able to get along well enough to come to a consensus on whether or not the sun rose in the east.  I do wonder how long it will be before we see the unions at United Airlines begin to overheat much like American Airlines’ already are. 

Sure, there are some airlines who are managing to get along with their operations employees pretty well.  That includes Southwest Airlines, Continental and even Frontier (for the moment.)  However, a pretty vast number of airline employees seem to be simmering just before the boil over point and I’ve begun to wonder if there doesn’t need to be a better industry solution to collective bargaining than what they’ve got now.  With the way things seem to be headed, particularly at legacy airlines but certainly not limited to them, there could be a truly momumental perfect storm of labor actions in the US. 

I won’t argue who is paid well, paid poorly or over-paid.  I certainly won’t argue who is or isn’t over worked either.  Frankly, if you think being an airline employee in operations is a cush job, you really don’t have visibility into just what those jobs entail and just how many hours a day they consume.  But if there is this much job dis-satisfaction among these ranks, clearly change is called for and I really don’t think this is all about money.

I think this is about job satisfaction.  Yes, the union leadership (such as it is and that ain’t much) expresses the grievances in monetary terms but I really don’t think it’s all about the paycheck.  I think it’s about feeling job satisfaction and feeling some meaningful reward from the job which, yes, includes salary levels.  For airlines, I think this about a need to have greater flexibilty and ways to improve productivity that aren’t constrained by decades old rules. 

Who is going to find a better way in this system which is largely based on 1930’s law and habits?  I really wonder if there is any industry leadership who has the ability to find a better way.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax