Airlines suffering much financial woes from hits taken after the 2001 recession are thinking about merging. United Airlines and Continential Airlines are the first to hold such talks, of what will be inevitable mergers many other airlines. Should United (dominant in the West) and Continental (dominent in the East) merge, it will create the world's biggest air carrier. Other airlines will be focused to ally with others if they want to survive.
What does this mean? Cheaper airline tickets for us students? Possibly. But in any merger, the employees are the ones who really suffer. Downsizing will indefinately cut jobs to save money. The question then becomes should/will the government, who has the power to regulate, allow this? During a time of great economic difficulty, the last thing we need is more unemployment.
While the government will make more money, they will lose it at the same time by funneling it down to unemployment benefits for those out of a job.
1 comment:
One would think that the government would reguate these mergers because of the problem with cutting workers; but the current administration has shown little to give us hope that it would stop making policy to benefit the corporations. One would think they'd lose money by owing more unemployment benefits but the asministartion will probably initiate cuts in those benefits to alleviate the loss.
Post a Comment