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This is possibly better saved for a small questions Sunday, but can someone explain why is the federal government up-in-arms over Southwest's latest boondoggle to me?
I understand why Southwest is getting hammered by popular opinion and in the press. I wasn't personally affected but I know a few people who were (8 hour delays, last-minute cancellations, etc) and I understand their frustration. I absolutely understand customers demanding refunds on cancelled flights or compensation for excessive delays. This, to me, is the market reacting and correcting itself. Southwest failed to deliver what it promise and it is reaping the economic and PR whirlwind.
What I don't understand are promises from both the Secretary of Transportation and POTUS to "hold the airlines accountable", which just seems weird to me. Is there a regulatory or national security reason for the Feds, much less POTUS, to be weighing in on this? Is it a straight-forward consumer protection issue or is it just the straight populist look-we-are-doing-something-to-people-you-currently-hate kind of politics that I am currently reading it as? What am I not seeing/understanding here?
I have limited insight into this: I had a former student who worked at Charles de Gaulle airport as maintenance crew, and he would explain to me the changing labour situation with respect to the airport. According to him the goal was to pare down staff to minimum required levels: anything to reduce costs was acceptable because they were in a highly liberalized market where consumers are very price-sensitive (for reasons unknown, customers discriminate by price much more heavily in air travel). That meant limiting crews, getting rid of redundancies, using third party, non-union contractors for every bit of unskilled labour, and generally running as light as possible personnel-wise. This meant that when you had those three or four days a year with bad snowstorms you got absolutely fucked and you have no one in reserve to handle the massive increase in work; but hey, that's a few days in the year and the other 360 customers get cheaper fares. People who get shafted are angry of course, but ultimately they don't interface with upper management and they forget soon anyways because hey, air travel is ridiculously cheap for what you're actually getting: unsurpassed convenience and safety for intercontinental travel.
My dad just got delayed 6 hours in Vancouver flying back (he was lucky: lots of people delayed multiple days). He couldn't fathom why every problem seemed to be someone else's responsibility (I tried to explain that job roles are heavily specialized to minimize the number of skilled labourers), why airport workers were so laid-back (it's no one's dream to load luggage, and they're not getting paid particularly well), and why in general the airport seemed entirely unused to this strange white substance falling from the sky (they know snow exists, it's just cheaper to not prepare for it).
Is your dad stupid? If not I don't think he had trouble fathoming that nobody dreamed they'd grow up to move luggage around or job specificity, I would bet he couldn't fathom why people put up with it. You know, assuming he wasn't just venting his frustration at spending a quarter of a day sitting around doing nothing with absolutely no chance of recompense.
He probably knows that these systems are heavily specialised to both minimise the number of skilled labourers and so nobody can be held responsible and everyone can pass the buck, increasing the effort required to complain and thus limiting the number of complaints received. He probably thinks it wasn't his dream to lay bricks or bag groceries or serve burgers either when he was younger, but he did it properly anyway because it was his fucking job.
He probably thinks it being cheaper not to prepare for snow is a mind blowingly idiotic excuse for all the employees in a major transportation hub to pretend they've never seen snow and they don't know how to react to it. He probably suspects that their wide eyed bewilderment at this mysterious frozen substance is part of the same problem as the lack of accountability and laziness - we always get the minimum amount of customer service we are on average willing to tolerate, and people with no self respect will tolerate anything.
He might even think that anyone who considers those justifications legitimate is part of the problem, giving the airport workers a pass because they hope others give them a pass for doing a bad job.
An alternative explanation is that he might just have checked out mentally. My father has done that on all except a few subject matters. It's not that he can't understand, it's just that he can't be bothered and therefore choose to believe what is comfortable to him unless significantly pressed.
I feel like a lot of retired or older people do this, and those who don't often seem miserable.
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