Travel strikes and strikes in general are a natural offshoot to the incumbent winning the election. You might think that the Democrats and Unions would be natural allies, but they really aren't. Despite transgressions against common sense, like button pushing jobs, for the most part union members have unions because they work in industries with a history of trying to kill or abuse them. Steel workers for example can die in horrible screaming agony when molten steel falls on them and burns them to a crisp. Not fun. People have been saying nasty things about the Bakers Union in regards to Hostess company, complaining that its an easy job for braindead people but pause and consider: can you lose a finger or arm when those bread machines grab you? Hell yes. Is seeing your wages cut to minimum acceptable when the executives were getting bonuses and raises? No, it really wasn't okay. Striking makes sense. Even if you drive the business under and have to find a new job, that's still fair play. That this makes the current president look bad, killing off the Twinkie and Wonderbread after being elected? Well, that's politics isn't it. I think I had a twinkie once when I was a kid, maybe around 9-10 years old. Just once. Never since then. I don't feel like I'm missing much here.
The current strike in LAX is amusing to me. The airline employees union is another job where there's a lot of danger, some less obvious than being run over by vehicles on the tarmac or going deaf permanently from all the noise. Those are bad enough. Anyone who flies for a living? That's a chest x-ray every transcontinental flight. Did you know that? The lack of atmosphere to shield you from xrays and gamma rays due to flying at high altitude gives you the radiation exposure of a chest x-ray. Do enough of those and you get enough radiation damage your chances of radiation poisoning and cancer become "certain" rather than "probable". It's a death sentence. This impacts your steward/ess and pilots both. People may be really annoyed about the strike in LA, but consider how trod upon they are. This is a nation where unfair treatment of workers is commonplace under the constant threat to outsource.
In my opinion, having recently worked at a sweatshop, ANY operation threatening to Outsource can get the h311 out. And have their product taxed to hell and back too. My last employer was in desperate need of a union to stomp their petty tyrannies flat, and see some managers fired. Some of my coworkers who transferred out called them little mafias and accused them of gangsterism. I am sympathetic to unions that see friends lose hands or arms in production plants run by bean counters who falsify paperwork and fire people "as a warning to the rest" because it gets them a little bonus. Companies need to think really hard about the legal liability they assume when allowing selfish managers to be employed there.
I went to a meeting for unemployed people yesterday. It was supposed to be about small scale manufacturing. It wasn't. It was a captive advertisement for an Obama-Stash program and a local college program that is designed to get you to leave this place by getting you that first interview at a factory, somewhere else. That's not small scale manufacturing. Its something, but not what I wanted to learn about, not the sort I wanted to meet. I think if I'd run that meeting, I'd be talking seriously about the requirements to run a business, and have a dozen business owners who are looking for employees that DO small scale manufacturing locally. No excuses, just people who are running shops up here. With all the electronics firms in the area you'd expect some to be there. No such luck. Same with the Welding folks, who were half of those at this meeting and there was no speaker on the subject. None responded well to the warning about Metal Fume Fever. I guess they're immortal androids, not like human beings with lungs or livers. I spent a week in agony from Metal Fume Fever. Really not fun. I don't recommend it for people I care about. Welding can be done safely, but it rarely is, and few welders have the breather masks to protect themselves from metals exposure. My experience welding was nasty and going to deal with organics was an improvement, even though those cause cancer too, just more slowly. Another doomed industry in serious need of Unionizing, if only to drive the damn thing out of the country.
And really, the biggest problem here is abusive managers. If managers were fair and pay was too, there'd be no appeal to Unionize and no turnover problems or loss of crucial skills that keep an operation running smoothly, which is key to manager workload and profitability. I think between greedy and lazy managers and greedy and indifferent stockholders, you end up pushing the actual workers too far. And then your business implodes. Unions are really the last warning you get. You either work with their terms or you die, as a company. Once you get the employees angry enough to Unionize, your profitability is DONE. Your smooth operations are DONE. Your business is DONE. You get to compromise way more than you want to, all because you wouldn't compromise early enough to prevent your own DOOM. So despite being a Libertarian, I really understand WHY people unionize and see it as a fitting punishment for abuse and incompetence in the business world. If I become a manager I will be VERY aware of that potential outcome and how to keep my people both happy and productive and treat them with the needed respect to continue business profitably. That's not easy, but I have YEARS worth of bad examples to use to my advantage.
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