Reviewed by Scott Hamilton
Unions Flying High: Airline Labor Power in the 21st Century
Ted Reed
McFarland & Co.
Feb. 25, 2025, © Leeham News: Ted Reed has been an aviation reporter for as long as I can remember. He also worked in corporate communications for US Air. Among his focus areas is labor relations in the US airline industry. He’s also the co-author of American Airlines, US Airways and the Creation of the World’s Largest Airline.
Reed’s new book, Unions Flying High: Airline Labor Power in the 21st Century, provides a detailed look at how labor unions have resurged from a long era in which their power was eviscerated through a series of airline bankruptcies (in some cases, more than once) and carriers that ceased operations.
This painful era began with the deregulation of the US airline industry in 1979. It continued through the 1991 Gulf War, which dramatically spiked fuel prices. Then came the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, which decimated US airlines. Add SARS (a pandemic largely limited to Asia) and other events, and unions lost most of their power. Wages and benefits were cut, and defined pension plans were terminated.
I lived through this era, first as a member of middle management with the first Midway Airlines beginning in 1979. Midway was the first airline to be certified by the then-ruling agency, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), in 40 years, right on the eve of deregulation.
The CAB liberally granted applications to cut fares and awarded new routes with abandon before deregulation became official. This led to the 1982 bankruptcy of Braniff Airlines and the following year of Continental Airlines. It was Continental’s bankruptcy that truly began the series of labor defeats that existed for the next three decades, ending with America’s 2011 bankruptcy.
Union battles and surviving deregulation
Frank Lorenzo, Continental’s CEO, details the story of that 1983 battle with labor and surviving under deregulation in his recent book, Flying for Peanuts: Tough Deals, Steep Bargains, and Revolution in the Skies. (Disclosure: I helped finish Lorenzo’s book.)
Reed brings the union story to the modern day. In the last few years, labor has won huge pay increases (anywhere from 25% to 40%) with new contracts, which were unheard of during the last three decades. In fact, these contract gains influenced the demands of the IAM 751 union in its demands last year with Boeing Co. The union won a 43% wage hike over the life of the contract, along with other gains.
Focus on personalities
Reed focuses not on the wins’ details but on the personalities who led the fight back from what some considered to be an abyss of the labor movement. To be sure, Reed covers specific contract disputes. He also reports on how key labor leaders recognized some of the overarching threats to the viability of airlines, notably 9/11 and the COVID-19 pandemic. The US federal government provided bailout monies in each case.
Sara Nelson is the president of the largest flight attendants union in the US. She’s no pushover. But she is also one of those rare labor leaders who (at least in my view) can balance what’s reasonable vs what’s not, and looks at the bigger picture about what’s best in the long term for the industry. Reed essentially views her as a hero, which is fine—and he makes a reasonable case for this accolade.
In the current DOGE firing effort under Elon Musk, Nelson is again at the forefront of protecting his union members. She doesn’t mince words: “You can build all the dick rockets you want to go to Mars while you try to leave the rest of us on the burning Earth. We’re gonna take control. This is our world, and it’s our government, and it’s our money,” she said at a rally.
Reed is clearly sympathetic to unions. His book provides an insight not often seen about the labor movement.
The one problem
The one problem: Publisher McFarland priced the book at a ridiculous $39.95 for a 195-page paperback, the price of many hardback books. (McFarland did the same for another book I will review in the coming days.) Even the Kindle e-book is a high $25.99. Lorenzo’s Flying for Peanuts last year was priced at $32.99 and it’s a 369 hardback (now on sale for $19.13). My book, Air Wars, The Global Combat Between Airbus and Boeing, was a 244-page paperback priced at $24.95.
Other than the price, I recommend Unions.
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