At least that was the point of view of some right-wing asshole who wrote an editorial for MSNBC. It is such a worthless anti-worker drivel that I won't even bother linking it here. Basically, his point was that the greedy airline unions should see what Reagan did to the air traffic controllers in 1981. Well, that pretty much screwed up the entire ATC system in the US for years! I am still upset that Reagan did not die a more miserable, painful death, after all the crap he's inflicted on America and the world.
The same asshole said travelers should fly the big airlines to reward them for their comprehensive services, and to show loyalty. In other words, reward them for their failed business models. Well, I fly United (and more recently, American) to reward the front-line workers who do their best to keep me going, even in the face of pay cuts and other difficulties caused by gross mismanagement at the top. Heck, I am even writing a novel around a United flight attendant.
At least the asshole had less than kind things to say about fellow Republican-owned Southwest Airlines. That was the only silver lining there.
Again, he claimed that unions are an outdated relic in modern American capitalism. But then, modern American capitalism starves the Average Joe so much he won't be able to participate in its processes anymore. That will doom it to failure, like the communist economies of Eastern Europe. The most robust economies, with the most class mobility, are neither communist nor hypercapitalist, but somewhere in between, like Australia, Canada, and Western Europe. Japan leans more capitalist than these, but it still has plenty of class mobility, and employers are as loyal to their employees as employees are to them, a trait not found in American slave-labor capitalism.
I am so upset, that toward the end of the year, I will see to that my current prison-labor Dell computer is replaced by a product from a more conscientious company like HP or Gateway.
