Why airlines tend to be unionized
philip.greenspun.com
Why airlines tend to be unionized
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#2Always interesting to watch the American labor movement eat itself. Depressing but interesting.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#3This happens similarly in American professional sports. Young, incoming players can't choose their own team - instead, they're subject to a draft, and controlled by the team that drafted them for anywhere from 4 to 10 years. During that time, the players make very below market money and have no leverage. Then, after they become a free agent, they get overpaid relative to equilibrium. The veterans that have more say in the union consistently bargain more benefits and agree to hose the young incoming players in return.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#4Always interesting to watch the American labor movement eat itself. Depressing but interesting.
I'm fine with it. I don't care very much whether airline profits go to the company or the employees. I don't care if pilots have to deal with an unstable industry. As far as I'm concerned they are complicit in it by voting the way they do in union elections. They have brought it upon themselves. (With apologies to all the pilots that vote for saner policies -- I tend to see large groups of strangers as single entities.)
What's important to me is airfares are incredibly low and I can fly anywhere I want with insane convenience. And in that sense, the American labor movement is doing exactly what I want: providing an ever-increasing quality of goods and services for me to consume at lower and lower prices.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#5Always interesting to watch the American labor movement eat itself. Depressing but interesting.
I'm fine with it. I don't care very much whether airline profits go to the company or the employees. I don't care if pilots have to deal with an unstable industry. As far as I'm concerned they are complicit in it by voting the way they do in union elections. They have brought it upon themselves. (With apologies to all the pilots that vote for saner policies -- I tend to see large groups of strangers as single entitie…
>I can fly anywhere I want with insane convenience.
At least you could before 9/11. Pre-9/11 I would have flown anywhere that was more than 3 hours away. Now I would drive up to 10 hours to avoid flying.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#6Regardless of whether the U.S. is able to maintain its trade barriers, a sustainable long-term structure would be a pilot-owned airline. If the pilots are the owners there need be no conflict concerning distributing profits.
Selling the company to the union, or rather, worker-owned companies seem to be the best case solution to the "union problem" - If my employees started unionizing, that'd be my first shot at a solution "Hey, uh, so I hear you don't like how I'm running the place. How 'bout you take a shot?"
Of course, the only way I've ever heard of that working is with large, established unions, which have large established pension funds that can be leveraged.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#7This seems a bit strange.
If pilots were actually taking nearly all airline earnings, why are there airlines at all? Running an airline requires a substantial capital investment, and if the return on those investments is effectively zero (or much smaller than other businesses), then there shouldn't be airlines because it's just not a profitable business, right?
The other thing is, given the rules he outlines, an airline could drastically reduce its costs by hiring more junior pilots and firing senior pilots. How would they hire more junior pilots? By paying them slightly more than competing airlines. So there should be pressure in the market to increase the salary of junior pilots, which long term should lead to higher salaries for juniors. This seems to contradict the authors experience.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#8A pilot's job is one of the easiest to replace with a computer. It is already happening in the military. In fact, the only actual role of a pilot today is to take off and land the plane, the rest is auto-pilot.
If the unions make it so hard to employ humans, it would only give incentive to further develop auto pilots, and the problem will solve itself.
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#9This happens similarly in American professional sports. Young, incoming players can't choose their own team - instead, they're subject to a draft, and controlled by the team that drafted them for anywhere from 4 to 10 years. During that time, the players make very below market money and have no leverage. Then, after they become a free agent, they get overpaid relative to equilibrium. The veterans that have more say i…
Sports labor markets seem pretty screwed up overall, partly because it's a very strange market. Are teams in competition with each other? Or is the league one entity, in competition with other leagues and even other sports?
Some other sports-employment models, broken in different ways:
1. The owner-collusion model. A league is exempted from anti-trust laws, and the owners get together to institute rules. There's a draft, and new players can't be hired except via the draft. There is no free agency, or limited, owner-supervised free agency. Basically the "market" is you either do whatever the system tells you, or you leave the league entirely. Most new sports leagues being set up follow this model (e.g. Major League Soccer).
2. The contracts-ban-free-agency model. There's no draft, and you can sign with any team you want. However, the owners have officially or unofficially standardized on an employment contract that requires you to get your team's permission before signing on with any other team, even after your contract expires. Basically a noncompete clause. This is more or less how European club football worked prior to the EU's Bosman ruling invalidating that variety of noncompete (among other things).
Re: Why airlines tend to be unionized
#10A pilot's job is one of the easiest to replace with a computer. It is already happening in the military. In fact, the only actual role of a pilot today is to take off and land the plane, the rest is auto-pilot. If the unions make it so hard to employ humans, it would only give incentive to further develop auto pilots, and the problem will solve itself.
Landing is typically done on autopilot these days; it is done manually to maintain a pilot's rating or for exceptional reasons.