Wednesday, March 7, 2001
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Wednesday, March 7, 2001 |
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Get ready for turbulent economic times By DAVE HAMRICK We in the Atlanta area are fond of congratulating ourselves on the fact that our economy is among the best in the nation. When times are tough, times are not as tough here as they are everywhere else. And when the rest of the country is taking off, we're in orbit. For instance, during a fit of insomnia the other night I happened to tune in a U.S. Senate committee hearing in which Alan Greenspan, economic guru/head of the Federal Reserve, was being interviewed. One of the senators questioning Greenspan was concerned about the future of unemployment. Unemployment in his area, he said, is running around 20 percent. Whew! And that's after 10 years of general economic expansion! We're doing well indeed. But something may be about to happen that could bring Atlanta's soaring economy crashing to the Tarmac, and it ticks me off. It's an impending strike, and if it were an impending strike of some downtrodden, unpaid group like transportation, garbage or hotel workers, I could understand it. I wouldn't like it I've always believed that if you don't like your employer, you should quit and go to work someplace else but I could understand it. But what threatens to bring us all down here in Atlanta does not involve some underpaid group. It involves a group of people who are paid more than 99 percent of the people in this country make. It involves a group of people who have been offered by their employers a salary level that would make them the highest paid people in their profession, but who have rejected that offer ... it's not enough. I don't begrudge Delta pilots a penny of what they make, mind you. You won't be fed any class envy in this space. As to whether they're worth it, that's between them and Delta. But it becomes a matter of public interest when they decide to hold the entire city hostage in order to get what they want. If they think they're worth more, they should have the courage of that conviction. Each pilot should offer his services to other companies and see if the market will prove that he is indeed worth more. Instead, what the Delta pilots are claiming is that they want more than what the free market will pay them, and collectively they are going to force the issue. In other words, they've had too much of a good thing. They have an axe in their collective hands and are inching up ever so carefully behind the goose that laid the golden egg. They've already yanked a few feathers out of its wings with their illegal sick-out back during the Christmas season. Now, with a strike looming, travelers are looking around for alternatives. There's no doubt that Delta will be losing business. That's the idea, of course. If you want to force more money and other concessions out of your employer, you don't have much leverage if you can't hurt him. The dangerous game is to figure out how much you can hurt him without killing him, as happened to the aforementioned hapless goose (see Eastern Airlines). But even if Delta survives the strike, it will take some time for the Atlanta area to recover from it. The lost convention business will reverberate throughout our economy, with disastrous results. Of course, the Delta pilots in December showed that they don't give a hoot about their company's paying customers, so I doubt they're going to lose much sleep over the rest of us innocent bystanders. We can only hope that they're bluffing.
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