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January 02, 2023
THE MORNING RANT - Herb Kelleher’s Prophecy Fulfilled: “The biggest threat to Southwest Airlines will come from within, not from other airlines”While I don’t currently know anyone working for Southwest Airlines, several people I’m close to worked for another of the major airlines in the years before and after its bankruptcy. Based on what I saw at that other airline, Southwest regrettably followed a similar path. The airline business requires a tremendous level of human staffing that cannot be replaced by machines - from gate agents, to flight attendants, to mechanics, to pilots, and many others behind the scenes. The necessity of such staffing, and the need to retain and adequately compensate these critical employees, is a source of great frustration to the elite business school graduates who get into executive positions and lament the tremendous labor expense required to run an airline. Obsessed with expense reduction, and oblivious to the incentives (and disincentives) they are creating, staffing is stretched to the breaking point with brutal schedules and short layovers. Equipment gets scheduled with no margin for error, and because of the obsession with cost reduction, backup staff and equipment are not readily available. Loyalty is a reciprocal thing, and when executives make it clear that they think of employees as their greatest (and most annoying) expense rather than their greatest asset, employees lose respect for and loyalty to those running the company. It’s hard for elite business school graduates to understand, but when they take actions to make employees “more productive,” especially if there are no corresponding reductions in impediments to efficiency, they are quite likely incentivizing higher absenteeism. Southwest used to have fanatically loyal employees who were supported by a CEO (Herb Kelleher) and executives who exhibited reciprocal loyalty to the employees. Those days are long over. Under the current regime, Southwest has incentivized operational breakdowns and absenteeism, and it’s getting a whole lot of it. Bloomberg confirmed the validity of this SW Airlines memo from the VP of Ground Operations, dated December 21, 2022, which was just before the Christmas cold blast that hit the country so hard. Listen to some of this adversarial language: …we will direct Employees alleging illness to provide a doctor’s note on the first day to return… …the Company will deny requests for reported personal absence… ”Due to the emergency…we will use mandatory overtime regardless of the employee’s status. When the only tool you have is a hammer… Here is the memo: Speaking only for myself, I was not able to even get in to my doctor’s office when I was dealing with flu and bronchitis this past Fall. I could only talk to my doctor by Zoom. As an alternative I could visit a “minute clinic,” except they had no open appointments for several days. I’m guessing if it was that hard for me to see a doctor, there were plenty of Southwest Airlines employees who couldn’t get in to have a face-to-face appointment with their doctors. Were they all fired? That’ll improve operations, won’t it? Then there’s this story: Southwest scrambles to fill key staff shortages with HQ workers, memo reveals [NY Post – 12/29/2022] “Southwest Airlines resorted to drastic measures in an attempt to get its planes off the ground, pushing corporate workers to pick up shifts as schedulers. This debacle is just a monumental failure by the Southwest executive team. Here is a fascinating analysis from Southwest pilot Larry Lonero that he put on his Facebook page 5 days ago. What happened to Southwest Airlines? I was a Southwest Airlines super-fan throughout the Kelleher era, and for some time beyond his retirement. It’s tragic what has become of that once great company. Perhaps this will be a wake-up call, and operational experts will take over again. (buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com) | Recent Comments
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THE MORNING RANT: 20th Century “Think Tank Conservatism” Cannot Save Our Cities
Mid-Morning Art Thread The Morning Report — 3/20/23 Daily Tech News 20 March 2023 Sunday Overnight Open Thread (3/19/23) Gun Thread: Still More March Edition! Food Thread: It IS The End Times: French Toast With Maple Syrup Is Back On The Menu! First-World Problems... Political Agitation is EXACTLY The Goal: It Is Training For What is Coming Sunday Morning Book Thread - 03-19-2023 ["Perfessor" Squirrel] Search
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