That's tough to do, but it leads to powerful unions. And because the industry is heavily organized, a new company finds it difficult to remain union-free for long. In other industries, unions have lost clout as companies move overseas or to other parts of the country to avoid them. But airlines and railroads can't do that, said Pat Cleary, a former National Labor Relations Board chairman who now works for the National Association of Manufacturers. Although mergers hurt unions in other industries, airlines and railroads are heavily organized.
Workers tend to keep their jobs, and the unions survive.
Airline unions, especially the pilots, gained strength before the industry was deregulated, Hurd said. Faced with paying higher wages, airlines could demand higher fares from the federal agencies that regulated their prices. In that setting, pilots established themselves and gained an awful lot of influence in the industry and developed a very strong national union. The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of Gannett Co .