Jet Not-So-Blue (Cheapskate, union-hating, understaffed operation)

Uh-oh. Nice guy airline JetBlue got itself in a tub of icy water this past week when its tightly-wound, just-in-time operation came unraveled. Amid freezing conditions, JetBlue managed to strand thousands of passengers on runway tarmacs, and left many more—some for days—in the hellish limbo where unwanted fliers wait, patiently or not.

Blue has offered up nonstop public contrition, millions of dollars in compensation and a hastily assembled passengers’ bill of rights. All well and good. But it won’t be enough to stop the next disaster, because under its leatherette seats, personal LCD screens and smartly attentive staff, JetBlue is a cheapskate, union-hating, understaffed operation. There is no slack for emergencies because people already work as long as possible, and there are no planes in reserve.

This is not to say that JetBlue is so different from other airlines. The company’s Chairman, CEO and founder, David Neeleman, learned the business at Southwest, which also squeezes out every dollar. And the older “heritage” airlines are trying the best they can to emulate the Southwest-JetBlue model. But most of the airlines, including Southwest, remain union, and employees are sometimes able to work human-scale hours.

The funny thing is, Neeleman styles himself as something of a progressive, and does all he can to make JetBlue a good-guy company. To find out how good, I went to BuyBlue http://www.BuyBlue.org (no relation), a website that reveals how blue companies are—as in blue state, red state—and urges readers to reward the good ones. Actually, BuyBlue doesn’t say very much about JetBlue: one positive news story (on their willingness to disinfect the drinking water), one negative story (in 2002, the airline gave five million passenger records to a Defense Department contractor). But the site does note that airline officers gave twice as much to Democrats as to Republicans. And, 23 percent of JetBlue stock is owned by one of the world’s richest liberals, George Soros.

So, JetBlue joins the ranks of other forward-looking, union-busting companies, like Whole Foods, Microsoft and Powell's Books. All talk a good game of social justice, but all of them fought unionization as hard as Wal-Mart ever did. Powell’s eventually signed a union contract, but not Microsoft, not Whole Foods and not JetBlue.

More:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/22/jet_notsoblue.php

:kick:

With respect to workers, the issue of to unionize or not is an issue for workers to decide collectively, not employers.