Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, two of the most profitable and best performing airlines, are merging in an effort to create the nationâs fifth largest carrier with an increased presence in high growth cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and New York City. Alaska Airlines will pay $57 a share in cash, or an equity value of $2.6 billion for Virgin America, capping a brief but successful run on public stock markets and generating a strong payoff for billionaire founder Richard Branson.
The same Alaska Airlines shelling out 2.6 billion dollars in cash to buy a rival spent the last few years fighting like hell to avoid paying their baggage handlers $15 an hour:
After the City of SeaTac passed Proposition 1 to raise the minimum wage to $15 in 2013âthe first city in the country to do soâAlaska Airlines and other groups filed a lawsuit arguing that employees of the cityâs international airport were outside the scope of the cityâs new law. That argument failed to convince the Washington State Supreme Court, who in August said airport employee should also receive a $15.24 minimum wage. The Court then denied a request from Alaska Airline to reconsider the ruling last December. Despite the victory for proponents of the higher minimum wage, SEIU is accusing Alaska Airlines and âits wealthy business partnersâ of using âlegal maneuversâ to delay implementing the new minimum wage.
Alaska doesn't have enough money to pay their baggage handlers $15 an hour but somehow money is no object when it comes to buying up other airlines or paying lawyers to get them out of paying their employees what they're legally entitled to. Here's the Alaska's reasoning...
Alaska Airlines has said that the higher minimum wage is a competitive disadvantage, because the majority of its workers are at Sea-Tac, while thatâs not the case for its primary competitor Delta Air Lines. Proponents of enforcing the wage law at the airportt have said that the lower wages aren't sufficient to support their families in the region.
...and here's an idea: Force all the airlines to pay their baggage handlers a living wage so that fucking your baggage handlers harder than other airlines fuck their baggage handlers no longer creates a competitive advantage for any given airline.
Finally and personally, as someone who flies a lot, it strikes me as foolhardy to fuck over people with access to commercial aircraft. We really don't want the people who work on airplanes or at airports to hate and despise the airlines they work for or the flying public they "serve" or the nation where the live and work and barely scrape by. Just saying.
