It is true that unions in aviation have played a major role in the industry, but the roles are going to change in the coming years. Nobody really knows what role the unions will play in future. Economists show mixed feelings about it, with some saying that employees in future will call for a return to these unions in great numbers. Others say that unions will fade out until only a few of them are left standing, but unions in aviation will go on for as long as there are people working in the aviation industry. Issues of their rights will continue to arise, e.g. the wage issues, working conditions, among others, and as much as there are issues to be addressed, these unions will remain relevant despite the many predicted changes in them structures and organization. This paper examines the pros and cons of the unions in aviation as well their futures.
The Pros, Cons, and Future of Unions in Aviation
Introduction
The core reason for having unions in aviation sector is basically to fight for the welfare of its members as well as defend them when a need arises. This checks some employers excesses because some disregard labor laws. The collective bargaining process makes sure workers voices are heard and that they can work with employers on important issues. The unions should be unbiased to both sides (Orukpe, 2010). This paper examines the pros and cons of the unions in aviation as well their futures.
Becoming an employee of an airline company a pilot, a flight attendant, etc, means you will be required to join a labor union in the industry get paid a wage and also work on contract. The unions opponents, though, claim that the arrangements of collective bargaining set labor cost so high that employers are unable to compete globally. However, it is undeniable unions in aviation have largely influenced modern aviation (JobMonkey, 2010).
The Pros of Unions in Aviation
Labor unions help members by collectively bargaining for wages or benefits better than the members as individuals could bargain by themselves. The chances of success for a worker to approach an employee alone to ask for a salary increment because he cannot manage his or her bills are slim indeed. He would probably get the sack immediately. However, unions can on behalf of the employee make such requests and even have the added advantage of representing the whole workforce, with better chances of success (Silvestri, 2010).
Basically, an aviation union allows its members to come together to bargain for better wages, salaries and benefits, and ensure that the employer treats everyone fairly. The unions also help defend minorities from improper firing by employers. One of the aviation unions biggest powers is of course strikes, which have always been used to shield members against dangerous conditions of work as well as against employers who are sometimes not willing to give workers their respective dues. Unions in aviation enable workers to get fair wages, better benefits as well as gain more respect for their work. A union in aviation advocates for the protection of its members, which is obviously a noble thing (Harper, 2009).
The unions in aviation also help improve on the safety of their members as opposed to non-union workers. A workforce that is professional as well as reliable makes union companies to be able to staff consistently. Many non-union organizations face labor issues daily that kill profits and hinder competitive abilities. For instance, a carpenter who does not belong to a union may not feel motivated to wake up before dawn, while one who belongs to a union might have more incentive to, though long-term. Also, because they can draw from professional pools of labor on project bases, companies are able to bid contracts of work even when they are not really sure who will be doing it (Rice, 2009).
The unions also give employees a chance to be an even more solid community, which is also a positive aspect. Organizing them makes members focus on fighting for the benefit of the employee as a whole, as opposed to fighting for individual gains, thus encouraging teamwork as well as co-operation (Harper, 2009).
There are many features that travelers relate with flying, which are actually as a result of lobbies by the unions. Limits on the size and numbers of bags one can board with, holding into a plane and the exit lights in the aircrafts are the product of the unions push for safety measures. Another good example is the years when flight attendants had, during their early years of their profession were required to stay single, stick to very strict weight, height as well as requirements to appear in a certain way, not to mention retire when they reached age thirty two. Also in the 1960s, the career for a flight attendant would last just eighteen months on average. The unions in the aviation industry helped reverse all that. Flight attendants are today taken as air-safety professionals, their careers are now long-term and they have opportunities for advancement. Another example worth mentioning is the ALPA the largest pilot union in the world representing sixty thousand pilots who fly US as well as Canadian airlines. The union was started in 1931 when a few pilots came together to fight for their protection. During the Great Depression, aviation management was pressing pilots to fly planes in risky conditions and for longer hours for less. They thus fought for more safe travel. These include standardized signs set up in runways throughout the country, a requirement to record voice and flight data in the cockpit, shatterproof doors to separate the pilots from the passengers, who may be terrorists (JobMonkey, 2010).
Becoming a member of a union in the aviation industry means that you will not have to bargain for sick leave, compensation, shift bids, vacation time, healthcare benefits and also flight benefits during your hire. All these are continuously predetermined by these unions and the employers. In case of grievances against their employers, the unions act on their behalf (JobMonkey, 2010).
Unions were started for the purpose of furthering the workers lifestyles and their prospects of employment, and thus, many unions will sometimes provide some extra training for the members such as night courses to upgrade in their respective fields or probably community courses like first aid or safety practices in the workplace (Silvestri, 2009).
Unions improve the economic welfare of members by helping negotiate for the increase of their wages and benefits. Economic theory implies that the unions actually try to exercise market power by limiting competitive forces which could force their wages and their benefits down, bringing about higher returns for union members than for the non-union workers can get in the very same industry. Little practical work has been carried out to assess the unions impact on matters of wage disparity between workers, but generally there are indications that these unions reduce the inequality between employees. Falls in unionization in the aviation industry may lead to a rise in salary inequalities. Where unions in aviation have increased wage inequality rises have been forestalled. Arguably their most important non-economic function is to provide a voice for labor in the workplace. When the unions speak out against abuse of workers, or even suggest changes in methods of work they do so with some degree of impunity than an individual would. Unions are indeed among the few bodies elected, democratically, to facilitate participation as well as the representation of workers. Other studies indicate that when unions become involved in programs of apprenticeship they help raise the probabilities of graduation for women above probabilities for those women in employer-only sponsored programs (Clement, 2001).
The Cons of Unions in Aviation
Unions in aviation sometimes push wages to quite unreasonable, unrealistic levels which are above what the companies could possibly sustain. This can cause aviation companies to raise the costs of their services and products. The effects are felt by the end user as cost increases get trickled down through the chain of the distribution. Strikes make members of those unions look greedy, especially because they hold big-money jobs as compared to the other workers (Silvestri, 2010).
This unpleasant environment could lead to an impasse where both the employees and the employers become unsatisfied with what is finally resolved. Others argue that the collective voice of the unions only serves to set employees against their employers in a way that is counterproductive to their working together and completing a job up to the highest quality standards possible. This causes employees to distrust management or management to distrust their employees. Strikes that last for long could cost employees much more than what they get in new contracts. Moreover, there is the fear that customers could be alienated, who might view the actions by the employees as self-serving and greedy. At times, these unions do undervalue decent wages to bargain for more (Harper, 2009).
Labor laws in many countries render union-led strikes legal and therefore the employers cannot sack an employee because of striking. Because the employers understand that the time the employees spend out of work would cost them a lot, they try to resolve the strikes as fast as possible even if the demands are unreasonable. The unions in the aviation industry can lobby for dismissal of legislation that does not protect a workers rights in case of an unfair dismissal (Silvestri, 2009).
Unions improve the economic welfare of members by helping increase their wages and their benefits. Economic theory implies that the unions actually try to exercise market power by limiting competitive forces which could force their wages and their benefits down, bringing about higher returns for union members than for the non-union workers can get in the very same industry. This goes to a point that the higher costs of labor are eventually reflected in higher prices of products, wage increases will be transitory in real terms, disappearing as inflation eats into them (Clement, 2001).
Another major disadvantage of the aviation unions agitation is that the work might vanish all the same. Calls for unrealistic wages can encourage the employers to reduce their number of employees or seek employees from countries where they can get cheaper labor. Laws on unfair dismissals can also backfire, in the sense that they could be applied to protect incompetent and even dishonest employees who deserve to be sacked. The law can also have the reveres reducing employment, as in Australian State laws from the 1970s as well as federal law of the 1990s, where most employers were unwilling to hire new workers as firing them for incompetence was proving too costly (Silvestri, 2009).
Several prices come with working in unions. Union workers might be capable of moving to different companies, but are usually blocked from doing so. This means that once one becomes a teamster, he or she always has to remain a teamster. To do something else would mean starting all over again. One of the largest benefits of unions is pensions, which, in general, cannot be transferred to a different
industry. The other flexibility aspect is that the members are unable to go further than their designated positions or even do anything more than what the contract lays down. Once at the top of the list, they remain there until they retire, in disregard of how hard they work in comparison to others. If ever they want to move up, they have to move to another place, which means loss of benefits. Obviously, the cost is quite a big matter here, although it is not only about the money. The unions do have power and when things are desirable, they push management for their members benefits. Although this does make sense, when things swing back to them and money becomes tight, the salaries become less competitive. What this means is that the non-union companies can be able to undercut their products prices as the markets labor price is lower than that of union contracts (Rice, 2009).
The Future of Unions in Aviation
Globalization, loss of job, and the diminishing strength of unions affect aviation worker directly or indirectly as the local industry continues to lose more and more jobs to workers from overseas. Competition for jobs is becoming a huge obstacle. Unions are now fighting less and less for wages or benefits than to keep their jobs. Todays political climate and also anti-labor initiatives have constantly stripped employee and even union of their rights. The effect could possibly be vast in the coming years due to increased lawsuits. Bureaucratic hierarchies are pulling down and authority is diffusing in the workforces service and also knowledge sectors. Without powerful unions, whose strength has been falling during the last fifty years and with robots and computers gradually replacing humans, the types of work the workers will be required to do might change significantly (SAKA, 2008).
Employment in public sector as well as governments poses one of the greatest challenges in the labor relations. It is important to note that these sectors are some of the most well recognized of all the adversarial relationships between unions and management. Because private companies are profit-oriented organizations, it is obviously in the companies or organizations best interest to keep their employees satisfied and thus productive. Jobs in the public sector e.g. postal services usually have labor relations which are starkly dissimilar to that of the private sector. Management generally has no desire to make sure that employees are fairly and ethically treated. Employers in the public sector are of course still legally bound by the set labor laws, but many of them have gotten so immune that hostility and lack of ethics is rife within their cultures (SAKA, 2008).
Unions,however, are not expected to end overnight. Many will still hold fast to their concepts with great determination. Several other professions which have never experienced the benefits that come with collective bargaining will not take note when these unions fade away. Labor markets are changing and because of globalization, companies will no longer be able to afford to keep on doing things in the same style. Global competition will eventually force aviation companies to change their styles of management in order for them to be able to compete (Rice, 2009). The world is becoming more and more global, so there is a possibility that aviation unions may start collaborations with unions in other industries especially those closely related. The mere fact that labor unions can agree with unions on reduction of wages rather than fight to raise them, shows that the future might not be so positive for airline industry workers. Since there are two major categories of airlines that operate within the aviation industry, it is likely that future trends in wage increments will be divided along these lines. Although future increment of wages does not look viable, certain groups of workers will feel the pinch even more than others thus hurting organized labors effect. Low cost airline carriers will most likely pay employees minimal wages to keep wage costs still low. However, workers in major carriers will be more likely to get a bit higher wages compared to the low-cost carriers. These differences, however, are likely to be minor. Generally most aviation workers will get lower wages in the future. Many airline carriers are trying hard to bargain with the unions on amount of wages they can pay their employees. If this goes on, then probabilities of labor unions losing grip are high (Rice, 2009).
Conclusion
The future for unions in aviation might be either negative or positive, although the negatives override the positives. A few of the positives likely in future are protection of the whistle-blowers, getting government loans as well as better deals for workers during strikes. The future, however, does not look as promising for unions in aviation, first because the major airline carriers are keen to reduce costs of labor and so they have been bargaining wage cuts with the unions. Also, many companies are now outsourcing services to other countries where the labor laws are not applicable making workers very vulnerable. The number of unions in the private sector is exceptionally low. Although these patterns are not that prevalent in the aviation industry, in future, they may finally permeate into it. Also, organized labor might not be able to produce fruitful results in future because even if numbers of unionized workers will increase, they will limit other competitors entry in the market, and so this will surely be a lose-lose situation. Globalization is giving foreigners a right to own carriers in other countries and so such employers might not be able to know about the principles of organized labor in those countries. On top of that, it will obviously be a hard thing to try to report problems the unions will be facing to the higher authorities. Unions will have a rough time trying to adjust to those new conditions, so membership and influence will go down. Unfortunately, some of the unions will press employers with their last breaths, struggling, desperately, to affirm themselves and, thus, some employers have to negotiate with the unions that reject a shift to the collaborative relationships. Both the workers and the employees will lose as the aviation companies will not be capable of competing and so they will be driven off business. Unions may provide training as well as placement services for members. They will be forced to add value for members to be able to hold them when the unions will no longer be negotiating for higher wages or better working conditions. Union leaders will have to learn customer service. They might also become benefit plans administrators, though third party. As we enter the portable-benefits era, they might have plenty of opportunities in future (Robert, 2010).
