Besieged
Besieged
Umberto Eco | Frontier and the Out-and-Back Model | Factoids | Countries for Old Men
At the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.
| Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
Haitians eating pets is only the newest appeal of the sort Eco is talking about. But the implicit blood libel — killing and eating our beloved pets, almost members of our families — takes this political tactic past some red line, solving the plot by pointing the finger at the stranger in our midst, who must be expelled by any means necessary. Or so the logic goes.
Frontier and the Out-and-Back Model
Frontier flight attendants have voted to strike, principally because of a major shift in that airline’s flight operations, as reported by their union, The AFA:
Flight Attendants at Frontier Airlines, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), voted 99.6% to authorize a strike with 92.7% participating. The results come as management refuses to negotiate over the impact of the carrier’s business model change. Frontier management has a legal obligation to bargain over that impact, separate and distinct from their obligation to engage in regular contract negotiations, yet they continue to refuse to bargain or even engage in mediation through the National Mediation Board.
“Frontier Flight Attendants are struggling to earn a living because of management’s new ‘out-and-back’ model. The impact of this change has turned our lives and our paychecks upside down,” said Jennifer Sala, AFA Frontier President. “The harm is real and happening right now. We’re ready to do whatever it takes to bring management to the table.”
Jason Gruenauer of Denver7 talked with Denver-based Frontier flight attendants about the change:
Denver7 spoke to three members of the AFA union at Denver International Airport recently. All three are Frontier flight attendants, who have all worked for the airline for at least five years. They explained how they are going to be impacted, starting with pay.
“So if I am on a three-day trip, then I’m getting paid from the time I leave Denver to the time I come back to Denver. And that's a per diem that we that we are allowed,” flight attendant and union member Lenore Walter said.
“Roughly $50 a day,” union member Chase Isley said, roughly calculating that per diem. “For a four day trip, potentially $200.”
But the per diem is not 'pay', per se. It's meant to be a reimbursement for expenses like food. But that is quibbling since it is cash flow they have based their personal financial planning on, and they pocket whatever is not spent. Now, they have $200 less a month than the planned on.
“When you just have a turn, you're just out and back,” Lenore added, explaining that flight attendants do not earn that extra amount.
Another issue that union members say come with the Frontier change is commute time.
“Previously, in order to get the number of hours that I wanted to fly per month, that was one three or four day trip per week for me, which meant four times back and forth to the airport for me,” flight attendant and union member Anissa Long said. “Now in order to get those same amount of hours, I would be driving back and forth 12 times.”
Between the cost of gas, wear and tear on their vehicles, and simply time to get back and forth to the airport, the union says the ‘turn’ model costs members more.
The airline should pay for their commute time, or at least the commute time increase over the old model. The airline is externalizing those expenses, making flight attendants pay for the savings the airline gets.
Could it be solved by paying a per diem for every day worked, not just those away from home? Yes, that will cost the airline something, but the value of added resilience is worth it.
On top of that, the union says more than half of their Denver flight attendants are flying commuters, who fly into Denver to work on outbound flights.
“That's just not feasible to fly in every day for a turn, just to fly back home at the end of the night, fly back again the next day to do a turn, and fly back again the next night. That's not feasible,” Chase said, adding that some commuters fly in from Las Vegas or Nevada before even starting their shifts.
This, I think, is a lousy flight model: flying to an airport to start a multi-day trip is terrible policy, but flying in-and-back for an out-and-back shift is crazy: bad economics, bad ecologically, and anti-resilient.
The airline cares about money — it's money — and so do the flight attendants: their per diems and commuting costs. One issue is that the airline approach does, in fact, lead to a better experience for customers, minimizes ecological costs, and is more resilent, as well.
I tend to take the unions' side in this face-off, but the out-and-back flight model is better for the common good. The disruption to flight attendants is evident, and the airline could cover a lot of ground by paying a per diem for every day worked, which would offset the cash lost and added commuting costs by fewer multi-day, multi-city trips.
But the ‘commuting in to start a multi-day trip’ model is an artifact of twentieth-century models. No one would argue in favor of them if we were starting with a blank piece of paper instead of inheriting the cumulative debris of airline deregulation and today’s chaotic airline travel marketplace.
In a perfect world, the US government would reregulate the airline market and institute out-and-back flight models from major hubs, which maximize resilience in the face of weather or other disruption while minimizing costs and ecological damage. In that same perfect world, they would also regulate flight staff pay so that flight attendants live above the poverty line.
Factoids
Cameras.
The share of photos taken on smartphones has grown from 25% to over 90% [since 2011]. Digital camera sales, meanwhile, have fallen by 93%.
However, high-end analog cameras are seeing a resurgence in interest as a luxury good.
…
Celebrities opinions.
25 percent of respondents believed that “celebrities should not express their opinions about political and social issues to the public."
…
Cleaning up.
Market research projects that 80 percent of dual-income households in America will use some kind of cleaning service in the coming years.
…
The next one is coming.
Across the five boroughs [of New York City], over $3.6 billion worth of one- to three-family homes sold last year were likely to flood before the end of a 30-year mortgage. That represents roughly one out of every five such homes sold in New York City in 2023. Until 2022, when climbing mortgage rates slowed the real estate market, sales in the city’s flood-risk areas had increased by almost 24 percent over the preceding eight years.
| Rebuild by Design via Hilary Howard
The only affordable houses are in flood-prone zones.
Elsewhere
Countries for Old Men
Peter Coy notes the central focus of a research report by Bianchi and Paradisi — Countries for Old Men: An Analysis of the Age Pay Gap — about the age wage gap: older workers -- boomers, for example -- occupy the upper echelons of slower growth, older companies, creating a wage gap between them and younger workers, who suffer lower pay and fewer opportunities for advancement.
Coy seems to want to handwave this generational problem off, but concedes the central argument grudgingly and attempts to throw up various defenses: the pandemic screwed things up, working from home leads to stunted career opportunities, and other anecdotal mumbo-jumbo.
But he and the researchers agree that it is a serious societal issue, and there are no simple solutions, although mandatory retirement is brought up and rejected.
The negatives of this age wage gap are clear: younger workers are being disadvantaged by oldsters gumming up the pipeline for higher pay and advancement, forcing youngsters to delay family formation, home ownership, and the opportunities that come from assuming greater responsibility at work. A wicked problem.
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