Jaunted

We haven't gotten to do in-depth, mind-numbing airline strike talk since last spring—unions often wait until the winter holidays so they can get maximum leverage—so needless to say we couldn't be more excited. That's especially true since the entire Jaunted staff travels over the holidays (as well as most of the year), and winter is wrecking havoc on airports early this year, and there's talk of "growing employer militancy" in the airline industry that will create conflicts with unions. So it's worth renewing the conversation now, in case this becomes a trend.

The politics of the Qantas dispute are murky but important, and in a way new. Remember that one of the things that really hurt UK airline unions last year was repeated and wall-to-wall political opposition. In Australia, though, Prime Minister Julia Gillard ended up going ballistic on Qantas for not warning the government that the airline was about to shut down Australia. So if there's a shift in the political fortunes of unions, that might change things.

But, far more likely, it won't. The cause of the strike involved Qantas's plan to move jobs offshore, which brings us back to the fundamental point we revisit almost every time we cover a strike. The airline industry is incredibly cut-throat and many airlines are bleeding money. Given the choice between letting a national airline go bankrupt or supporting them as they engage in cost-cutting, most politicians won't have to think very long. You can get a sense for how the debates will eventually play out by seeing exactly that the tribunal handed Qantas' employees a huge loss. Even Gillard was bragging over the weekend about putting an end to the strike.

In any case, there are now 21 days of talks coming between the parties. In the meantime Qantas is promising to win back flyers by cutting ticket prices. If there's one thing Ryanair has taught us it's that you can endlessly abuse your customers as long as you later promise to fly them cheaply from Point A to Point B, so the airline might really escape long-term damage.

If everyone keeps just stumbling along—airlines not really hurt by stoppages, unions not really getting enthusiastic backing—we may be looking at a winter of half-enthusiastic strikes that are periodically shut down by courts, which is what happened in the UK last year over and over again. Fun!

[Photo: Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia / Wiki Commons]