suicidal madness
Apr. 3rd, 2008 05:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI 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.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-03 02:46 pm (UTC)I mean, seriously.
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Date: 2008-04-03 05:53 pm (UTC)This is the country that used to have two national airlines, one in the public sector, one private — Air Canada and CP Air, respectively. CP Air was sold to the knackers by Canadian Pacific; the knackers changed the name to Canadian Airlines (a stupid move that created endless confusion). Whereupon the whole body of CP Air/Canadian’s unionized workforce was taken over by the Canadian Auto Workers (I couldn’t make this up), whose boss, one Buzz Hargrove, announced that he would rather see the company shut down entirely than make any concession whatever on either wages or staffing levels. Canadian had, at that time, probably the highest labour costs of any airline in North America, and no state owner to keep it from collapsing; so it promptly collapsed. Ever since, Hargrove has been a villain to the airline business and a laughingstock to the country at large. (But he still inexplicably remains in charge of the CAW.)
This left Air Canada as the most inefficient surviving airline in North America, at a time when governments the world over were reconsidering the wisdom of spending billions to fly their flags at 35,000 feet. Air Canada was duly privatized, but its unions insisted that it continue to be run just as always. The company was rife with what the English used to call ‘fine old Spanish customs’, so that it required about twice as many workers per flight and three times the labour cost of its non-union rival, the upstart WestJet. Guess who collared the lion’s share of Canadian’s former domestic traffic? Not Air Canada.
To keep itself afloat, the former state airline actually sold off its own aircraft and used the proceeds to lease them back from the company it sold them to. In effect, it ate itself to keep the unions fat and happy. In due course Air Canada went bankrupt and was sold to yet another corporate knacker, which laid off immense numbers of people and is still, as I believe, struggling to break even with the surviving remnants of the airline.
Not even in the Italian language.
Date: 2008-04-08 06:13 pm (UTC)No matter what our disagreements over matters of political economics, friend, when it comes to things like this, we are brothers in spirit.
Well said.