![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
suicidal madness
Apr. 3rd, 2008 05:58 amI am in principle a supporter of trades unions, but there simply are no words bad enough for the bodies that represents Alitalia pilots and other employees.
Alitalia itself should have been shut down thirty years ago. It was bankrupt when I was a teen-ager, and the only reason to keep it open was that it would have advertised the failure of the Italian political class. However, the times they have a-changed, and it no longer is possible or even legal to keep inefficient state-subsidized companies in the market competing unfairly against well-run rivals. With ghastly slowness and unwillingness, the Italian govenrment has finally put Alitalia on the market, while government and opposition, both perfectly aware that the company was a dead man walking, nonetheless competed with demagogic proposals to have it carry on somehow. Mr.Berlusconi, who would never even think of running one of his companies at the conditions in which Alitalia finds itself, actually upped the ante, when his responsibility as head of the opposition should have been to warn that a feckless government and even more feckless unions were destroying the company.
That was bad. But sense of some sort seems finally to have seeped in both political groups, or rather they must have decided that they had lied and prevaricated enough, and a negotiation was started with the Air France/KLM group (a company as successful as Alitalia is not) to sell Alitalia as a going concern. And then, on the very last day of negotiation, the unions came to the table and, according to what they themselves said, announced to Air France/KLM and to Alitalia management that they had, off their own bat, found an Italian investor who was interested in buying a share of the company and pump in some capital of his own. At which point AF/KLM got up off the desk and announced that the negotiation was over, and the chairman of Alitalia resigned - the last of several who have lasted no more than a few months each.
There are no words for folly like this. Not even in the Italian language. The only consolation is that, if Alitalia is finally shut down and everyone loses their job, they will finally realize what morons their union representatives really are, and lynch the lot. I would gladly supply the rope.
Alitalia itself should have been shut down thirty years ago. It was bankrupt when I was a teen-ager, and the only reason to keep it open was that it would have advertised the failure of the Italian political class. However, the times they have a-changed, and it no longer is possible or even legal to keep inefficient state-subsidized companies in the market competing unfairly against well-run rivals. With ghastly slowness and unwillingness, the Italian govenrment has finally put Alitalia on the market, while government and opposition, both perfectly aware that the company was a dead man walking, nonetheless competed with demagogic proposals to have it carry on somehow. Mr.Berlusconi, who would never even think of running one of his companies at the conditions in which Alitalia finds itself, actually upped the ante, when his responsibility as head of the opposition should have been to warn that a feckless government and even more feckless unions were destroying the company.
That was bad. But sense of some sort seems finally to have seeped in both political groups, or rather they must have decided that they had lied and prevaricated enough, and a negotiation was started with the Air France/KLM group (a company as successful as Alitalia is not) to sell Alitalia as a going concern. And then, on the very last day of negotiation, the unions came to the table and, according to what they themselves said, announced to Air France/KLM and to Alitalia management that they had, off their own bat, found an Italian investor who was interested in buying a share of the company and pump in some capital of his own. At which point AF/KLM got up off the desk and announced that the negotiation was over, and the chairman of Alitalia resigned - the last of several who have lasted no more than a few months each.
There are no words for folly like this. Not even in the Italian language. The only consolation is that, if Alitalia is finally shut down and everyone loses their job, they will finally realize what morons their union representatives really are, and lynch the lot. I would gladly supply the rope.
