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'Season of Strikes' About to Hit American and European Airlines

September 8, 2010 at 4:38 PM | by | Comment (1)

Following up on the weekend strikes in London and Paris, the phrase that the Associated Press is going with this mornning is "season of strikes in Europe." Put bluntly: there's not enough money to go around, and workers aren't going to go to their jobs unless they get more of it. It's not just Greece, although of course it's Greece too. Spain and the Czech Republic are hosed as well, and when you add them to the UK, France, and Italy you start to run out of countries that aren't going broke.

Now this is normally where we'd tell you that bad times overseas equal good travel opportunities from here. The problem is that you actually have to be able to get to those places, and a wave of airline strikes is about to start making that dicey. Virgin Atlantic just narrowly averted a strike, but they're pretty much the only ones. British Airways workers apparently have decided to walk out again, because that's who they are and that's what they do. Meanwhile roughly the entire country of India is facing labor-driven transportation disruptions.

Back here at home, US Airways pilots are picketing in Philly, presumably part of their brand new strategic alliance with the Teamsters (that'll make things smoother!). Meanwhile, new labor regulations mean that unionization is about to pick up steam across all airlines and railways.

All of that is merely the good news. The great news is that figures from this morning show that airline demand is softening. That means less revenue, which means more union discontent. Now you might think it would mean less union discontent, since if workers know that there's a smaller pie they won't demand more of it. But as you're quickly about to see across Europe, that's opposite of the way it turns out.

[Photo: comedy_nose / Flickr]

Related Stories:
· http://www.jaunted.com/tag/Airline%20Strikes [AP]
· Airline Industry [Jaunted]
· Airline Strikes [Jaunted]

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Return to » 'Season of Strikes' About to Hit American and European Airlines


Unions don't get it

Here's what I don't understand: why go after huge pay raises at a time when there is 10%+ unemployment (even higher in Europe) and a badly performing economy? Why risk pushing your employer over the brink into bankruptcy to gain a few months of a bigger paycheck? It is very short-term thinking, and it's going to land a lot of airline employees on the unemployment rolls if they don't tread carefully. Reminds me of what the unions did to GM and Chrysler over the course of a few decades of forcing over-generous pay and benefits. Airline employees need to think hard about whether they want to end up in that same position.
EXP100K on September 12, 2010 at 12:21 PM #Permalink

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