BAA forced to sell airports by the Competition Commission: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/aug/20/baa.theairlineindustry

What interested me most was:

QUOTE:
Trade unions representing airport workers expressed concern about the commission's proposals. Unite national secretary, Steve Turner, said: "Any attempt to break up BAA will be resisted. This union and our members will not sit back while the market plays games with their jobs and their terms and conditions of employment."

We might all agree that the best thing would be for airports to be renationalised. Falling short of that, my instinct is that private competition is better. I'm sure it's by no means the textbook free market, but it does seem out of order for the same company to own all of London's 3 main airports, and Scotland's 2 largest.

What do you reckon?

How does safety play into this? I'm not sure I want flights into London (one of the world's busiest airport hubs) "competing" for airspace over the capital to maximise flights in and out of 3 airports that might seem miles apart on the ground but in air flight terms are like trying to park three cars on a driveway made for 2 and a half?

Good point- it's presumably down to air traffic control which, as I understand it, was absurdly privatised. I'm not sure there's a huge amount to choose between one large private operator and more than one private operator in that respect though. Actually, a monopoly will care less about crashes/"incidents" because we have to return to them anyway.

Anyway, let's switch to the real enemy:

QUOTE:
Colin Matthews, BAA's chief executive, said: "Just as the government is about to make the decisions that could lead to the first full length runways being built in the south-east since the second world war, the commission risks creating uncertainty, delay and confusion at exactly the wrong time."

He wants to see what the government have done to rail. In fact he's well aware of it, the money he makes from internal flights of people who should be on trains.

Presumably unions like private monopoly as much as the monopolists do. To the extent that monopolies earn "extra" profits due to the lack of competition, labour should be able to extract a share of it. If this extra money is competed away, there is less money for labour.

Air traffic control was absurdly privatised in more ways than one. The government has already pumped more money into NATS post-privatisation than it received in the privatisation, in order to save it from financial collapse. The idea that the government would allow air traffic control to fail in private was always laughable, and it's not like there's any competition either.

Really? Canada privatized air traffic control about ten years ago and there hasn't been a need for a bailout (and nor have there been any safety-related issues that I can recall).

Mind, that's because they get to charge a $20 levy on every flight you take...

QUOTE:
Presumably unions like private monopoly as much as the monopolists do. To the extent that monopolies earn "extra" profits due to the lack of competition, labour should be able to extract a share of it. If this extra money is competed away, there is less money for labour.

I'm not sure trade unions "like" monopolies for any economic reasons, but my experience of dealing with TUS from the management side is that they do prefer to be able to represent all the workers in an industry, and speak to a single management side team, which they would get in a monopoly (or, say, in a government department). It massively increases TU bargaining power to know that they can bring production to a standstill if they want to, with no (ultimate) threat to their members' jobs, as in the end, public demand will force the management they're bargaining with to get the production lines rolling again. In a competitive industry, the unions know as well as management that if they bring their own particular firm to a standstill, its competitors will pick up the slack within minutes, and while they might "succeed" in crippling their own company, it would be a somewhat pyrrhic victory inasmuch as the firm would go bust and they'd all be out of a job.

That's a fair enough analysis but there's also the more prosaic fact that unions would, first, oppose a public monoopoly becoming a private one because it would likely lead to a deterioration in their members' working conditions; and then, second, oppose fragmentation of that private monopoly into lots of private competitors on the grounds - again - that it would likely lead to a deterioriation in their members' working conditions.

They would also, after all, have quite a lot of recent evidence to back up that case.

AG, part of it was just that it was a really badly designed privatisation, and part was the downturn in air traffic after 9/11.

QUOTE:
oppose fragmentation of that private monopoly into lots of private competitors on the grounds - again - that it would likely lead to a deterioriation in their members' working conditions.

They'd be in a reasonably strong position whatever though, wouldn't they? How successful have Tube Lines been in cutting back on conditions?

That fellow with the Russian name in The Times seems to think this will slow down airport expansion round London. I'm not so sure. It might get rushed through as a sweetener.

Tubbs, well they treat the cleaners like shit, and have certainly sought to weaken conditions. That they've been resisted in places is down to good union organisation. Doesn't mean the union's analysis that privatisation threatens conditions is wrong does it?

I'm not clear on whether you think the union's position is right in the public interest sense or just in terms of the members' interests.

Well a union isn't some sort of philanthropic public-interest arbiter (it has no mandate to determine that), so it can only be the latter. Though I'd argue that it is in the public interest for their workers to be treated well, yes. And people who work in an industry would have a certain amount of expert and insider knowledge, too.

Yeah, I shouldn't expect a union to be that. But do you think those things outweigh the problems with a private monopoly? And what (for what it's worth) should our attitude as "outsiders" be if it could be shown to be in broader "public interest"?

E10 Rifle wrote:

QUOTE:
That's a fair enough analysis but there's also the more prosaic fact that unions would, first, oppose a public monoopoly becoming a private one because it would likely lead to a deterioration in their members' working conditions; and then, second, oppose fragmentation of that private monopoly into lots of private competitors on the grounds - again - that it would likely lead to a deterioriation in their members' working conditions.

I've just re-read this and it got me thinking. Isn't this just tantamount to saying the public sector is a softer touch as an employer? Why wouldn't a public sector monopolistic operator press for just as much in terms of labour efficiency as a private sector monopolist?

It can't just be the lack of a profit motive; the standard justification for putting things in the public sector as opposed to the private is that because they don't have a profit motive they can concentrate on service. But if they are a soft touch on labour efficiency issues than the private sector, that means that the public gains in service are likely of lower value than the lost profit, right?

That is, unless you argue - as I suppose one very well could in the absence of hard data one way or the other - that being nicer to workers in and of itself improves service to citizens.