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U.S. labor, E.U. clash on aviation bill
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TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: Congress is taking up a major aviation bill today. Supporters say it will help save lives. But the European Union opposes it -- claiming it's actually designed to save American jobs. From the European Desk in London Stephen Beard reports.
Stephen Beard: The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority currently inspects foreign aircraft repair stations once a year. A provision in the new bill will increase that to twice a year. In the future, if a foreign repair station has not been inspected twice, U.S. airlines won't be able to use it.
American labor unions back the bill. They argue that many foreign countries are not as rigorous as the states when it comes to safety. But the European Commission says the bill is pure protectionism.
Kieran Daley of Air Transport Intelligence:
Kieran Daley: What this is all about is making it difficult for U.S. airlines to find approved overseas maintainers of the aircraft so that the work would have to stay in the States.
If Congress passes the bill in its current form, the European Union says it will pull out of a pending international aviation safety agreement. And it could retaliate with its own safety regulations.
In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.
Parts of the bill are pure protectionism. Should the EU and Asia retaliate with their version (and some countries have even harder regulations than the US) what will we do and allow? At the end we will force all US aircraft's to be only repaired in the US but we will lose more jobs here, since the rest of the world is going to have maintenance done on their aircraft's in any place other than the US. How many problems did we relay have with aircraft's that have been repaired outside the US? Has anyone ever come up with real numbers. Wonder why? The second part of the equation is that Unions that favor the bill are trying to block any outsourcing of maintenance other than within an airline it self. Many US companies will be affected by this. Airlines will be blocked from outsourcing in order to be able to get the airplanes turned around in a timely fashioned manner and at the best price. That would only mean that the cost for the traveler will go up and lots of jobs will be lost in the US again.
Further more this bill contains language to protect the status of Unions (see FedEx) and not the best interest for companies and consumers. In addition it will hamper airlines to stay competitive in an international matter. By trying to get rid of their alliances (favored by the pilots unions) we will ensure that travelers will have less choices and higher prices on US carriers. It also limits the survival of some carriers, since foreign investors that can help and would help (with money as well as business models that are profitable) to stay out of the US market. DHL is one company that left the US because of protectionism. At the end US jobs have been lost (if I am not mistaken about 38,000 of them). Protectionism does not work and harms us more than it helps. Compare this bill with the effort of California to raise the EPA standards and the White House in the past blocking it saying that CA is wrong. This bill represents to the aviation industry today, what the Bush administration did to California regarding to emission control.
