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Got the Jet Blues? Fly Union Instead |
Recent air travel in the icy Northeast made me glad of one thing: I wasn’t flying JetBlue.
Instead, I was flying on a carrier where the pilots, staff, flight attendants and mechanics are unionized—which they are not on JetBlue. I got to my destination in time to watch TV reports showing stranded JetBlue passengers crowd in airports along the East Coast.
While JetBlue chairman, CEO and founder David Neeleman was shocked, shocked, that his low-cost (read: underpaid) airline could leave passengers stranded for hour after horrible hour on the tarmac, he shouldn’t be so surprised. He asked for it.
As Alec Dubro notes today on TomPaine.com, Neeleman’s vitriolically anti-union stance has prevented JetBlue staff from forming unions—an attitude all too many corporations take today, encouraged by the nation’s weak labor laws. In a San Francisco Chronicle article a few years ago, Neeleman explains why he thinks unions are not needed for companies such as his.
Q: Would you resist a labor-organizing effort at JetBlue?
A: We would. I love American history, and I’ve studied it. I understand we had a big need for unions in this country. You basically had unscrupulous people who were building companies on the backs of their people without giving them health care and without giving them other benefits. They made them take on hazardous jobs and work long hours.
We aren’t one of those companies. We don’t do that to our people.
We don’t want a third party who may or may not have our best interests in mind or our crew members’ best interests in mind because they may be serving a union of one of our competitors. They are trying to equalize us and take away our competitive advantage.
That “competitive advantage” is now costing JetBlue and its shareholders $10 million in refunds to passengers on canceled flights and $16 million worth of vouchers to delayed passengers for future travel.
And, in the case of JetBlue customers, that competitive advantage increases your chances of being a passenger on one of its 1,000 canceled flights.
3 Comments
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It’s also a competitive advantage to perform only rudimentary maintenance, maybe skip a few corners here and there and so on. I for one try to shun companies like that, especially an airline of all things.
Please publish a list of the union airlines, so we can be sure to fly them instead. Thanks.
Believe it or not Southwest Airlines is the most heavily unionized airline flying today. I would suggest that CEO’s take heed and realize that union workers are the most efficient and productive. That is why we deserve to be paid better than sub contract help.