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Jul

29

The wrong Union Model and USAirways

July 29, 2005 |

After decades of USAirways partnering with local government officials to create a quasi monopoly out of the Pittsburgh airports, I can’t say I’m terribly sad to learn that the Airline will have an even lower profile in the region with the call center now closing. Having flown my first Southwest flights last week to and from Chicago, I say thank GOD the stranglehold is gone. Southwest is more than sufficient, and the price is right. I look forward to more routes enabling me to be free to roam around the country, while not feeling like I just financed a new car in the process.

I feel some empathy for the folks losing their jobs, no doubt. But I can also feel satisfaction based my recent USAir experiences… or lack thereof. I recall this past winter being delayed in Philadelphia for over four hours waiting for a connecting plane to arrive from another area of the country where it had been delayed due to poor weather, so that we could finish our trip home to Pittsburgh. The plane arrived, and we made it to Pittsburgh in good spirits near midnight, understanding fully that USAir had no control over the lateness.

But that happiness to be home lasted only a few minutes when half the passengers at the baggage claim came to realize that their luggage had not made the plane. More strangely, for many of us our luggage had been split up: one piece had made it, while another was missing. In my case, I was further perturbed to learn that the one bag that made it had been so mishandled that several bottles of well-packed Cruzan Rum, hauled straight from the Island itself, were broken and had spilled their contents throughout the bag. Of course, USAir does not cover broken bottles of booze.

In any event, you’d think four hours might be sufficient for the baggage crews of USAir to have enough time to do such a menial entry-level job assignment as getting bags moved onto the correct plane, especially given an extra four hours to do so. During my drive to my car in a private shuttle, the driver, upon learning half my bags had been lost said, “Let me guess: USAir. Philadelphia.” Indeed, of all lost luggage stories he’d heard, that was the common thread to most. As he explained it, this was payback from the luggage gorillas for having their union contract renegotiated as part of the airline’s effort to save USAirways from total bankruptcy ruin. In other words, no new contract, no job.

But instead of moving onward and upward and counting their blessings for being among the most heavily paid in the industry for so many years, the response was to take out the anger on the customer in order to further hurt the airline’s reputation. I suppose having the highest cost per passenger mile in the industry was a better solution?

That mentality, my friends, is why fewer and fewer people wish to be associated with most all unions, who seem to forget that, in the end, the consumer is their boss… And so long as the consumer (and in Pittsburgh’s case, the taxpayer) is free to pick up and use a different service (or move from the region to more sensible areas of the nation), you will find fewer and fewer companies able to survive your legislated stranglehold on those industries where you still thrive.

Of course, that is also why the only area of the economy where unions thrive are those where the consumer has no choice but to patronize union workers. Government schools, for example, claim first dibs on most property taxes… forcing local citizens to duke out their desires at school board election time, while also forcing public schools to always use unionized labor. If someone wants to send their kids to private schools, they effectively throw away their tax dollars and pay twice.

Just the same, anyone who has dealt with a government agency knows fully well the quality and efficiency one can come to expect. At a bare minimum, labor costs far exceed private industry. Take the state liquor stores, for example, where checkout clerks are paid three or four times the private average…or turnpike toll collectors…For goodness sake, in some states tickets are still handed out by a person… its 2005 for heavens sake! And then there is the service issue. Bureaucracy is just that, and while the private sector is about meeting the demands of consumers, government is about you waiting in line and getting the minimum level of service required by law.

So, goodbye call center… And good riddance, US Airways….

For what its worth, you can read up on how some airlines “partner” with local governments to prevent competition by reading up on the situation of American Airlines in Dallas. I think we learned first hand on how the region that is supposed to benefit from fatter than average salaries paid by such organization, instead, actually suffers at the hand of non-competitive fares and declining services.


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