<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Plato90s:
Airlines bleed money, require government aid, has lots of unionized worker they pay starvation wages to (and then appease with benefits like free travel), and old airlines die to be replaced by new airlines doing the exact same thing.
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Just reading an article in today's paper (Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service) arguing that the laws governing airlines ought to be re-considered.
In the article, the authors claim that the workers have the airlines by the short and curlies - in 1990, average compensation was $47,384; in 2002 it's in excess of $80,000. 40 percent of total operating expenses.
This doesn't mean that ramp rats are getting 80K a year, but the salaries, along with flight bennies, hardly seem like starvation wages.