AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN - OFFSHORING AIRLINE MAINTENANCE

"An accident waiting to happen? Outsourcing raises air-safety concerns", an old article published in the March 2007 edition of Consumer Reports illuminates again. In August 2008, CR further reported in that major airlines had all engaged in the same practices: outsourcing maintenance in the USA and overseas to save money with disregard for the concerns raised in CR’s article. The article never mentions the countless unionized American Airlines employees who were axed in order to accomplish this. One would think that maintenance of aircraft should be at the top of any corporation whose business it is to fly airplanes. Quality in maintenance used to be part of the instilled pride of any Airline Corporation.

Except that flying airplanes is only incidental to the real business of the airline corporation today. “Airline” is part of the Brand, and the real business of the corporation is to produce a return on the investment of shareholders (i.e., to make money). For example, the top ten shareholders of American Airlines – well over 50% - are all investment firms or one sort or another. These owners of American Airlines and their predecessors have been directing the outsourcing of labor to cheaper alternatives to the relatively well-paid union employees.

The CR 2007 article states, “Contract repair facilities, especially those overseas, are subject to less oversight than in-house shops, with fewer screening programs for workers, fewer inspections, and loopholes that allow even more subcontracting”. The FAA discloses that they “…do not restrict the amount of outsourced maintenance if the carrier has a maintenance audit program in place.” The foxes both guard and own the henhouse. The maintenance work by a casual worker hired by a subcontractor of a subcontractor to work on critical airframe systems is fine, as long as there is a proper e-paperwork trail.

The CR article describes what I would label systemic consumer problems generated by outsourcing airline maintenance:

Substandard work

Unlicensed mechanics

Security

Passenger inconvenience

Passenger deaths

The FAA has lost most of its investigative staff, and is now using statistical analysis to direct what few investigators it still has. The airlines self-report to the FAA on almost all matters, and the FAA uses these data to compile reports. Some are cited to show that outsourcing causes no big problems. But I’ve not seen a report that touches upon the all the data voluntarily furnished and stored in its Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) system.

Since the airlines are not forthcoming about reporting on substandard work, unlicensed mechanics, security breaches  – and due to the proliferation of these on and offshore “sweat-hangars” – the occasional fine here or there is just considered part of the cost of doing business by the airlines.

Tell that to the passengers trapped on the tarmac for twenty hours due to avoidable mechanical failure. Or worse. According to the NTSB, 28% of fatalities can be attributed to mechanical failure in the 2000’s, up from 21% in the 1990’s. Nobody could argue that the boards of these outsourcing airlines had the best interests of consumers on its mind when these decisions were made.

Perhaps a blip in the Stock Market due to ongoing public concerns about airline safety and outsourcing as recently reported in the MarketWatch.com February 18, 2010 article by Christopher Hinton, entitled "Airline Stocks Decline 2009 Accident Rate Falls" indicates that consumers and investors are more savvy than those old men in the boardrooms realize.

OUTSOURCING TERROR

At Homeland Security, contractors outnumber federal workers according to an article by Ed O’Keefe in Washington Post today.

When Advisor Ridge Discussed the establishment of the Homeland Security Department, it was immediately evident that unionization of employees was to be eschewed at all costs:

“SECRETARY MINETA: Thank you very much, Governor Ridge. For the past 40 years, ever since federal workers were allowed to unionize, the President has retained government-wide authority to exempt federal agencies from collective bargaining requirements if the agency's primary function revolves around national security work. In 1978, this position was codified into federal law, and it has worked well ever since.

And I speak from experience. I am the Cabinet officer who has had the most recent experience of building a new agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the largest undertaking of its kind since World War II. The flexibility called for in the President's request for legislation that establishes the department of homeland security was critical to our success in standing up the TSA, and I wholeheartedly endorse this approach.

“The enemy is fast and nimble, and we must be, as well. And so this proposal ensures that the President will have the tools to meet a rapidly changing threat. “

“GOVERNOR RIDGE: Again, we call on the Senate leadership to make sure that the President retains his executive discretion and prerogative as it relates to national security in this new department, and two, that they go about the business of fashioning the new department and getting -- working with this administration and with their House colleagues to get a measure to the President's desk that protects this country, so that he can sign it. “

Please note that “to exempt federal agencies from collective bargaining requirements if the agency's primary function revolves around national security work” has resulted in the return of many Federal Homeland Security workers to the level of de facto “at will” employees as their unions are busted.

The eventual result has been the systematic dismantling of Federal departments, replaced by for-profit contractors. It is no secret that these same contractors have significant financial ties to a large number of governmental officials. Check out http://www.OpenSecrets.org and prepare to be dismayed – or educated.

The sad fact is that most of these contractors are outsourcing jobs which (if really necessary) should have been assigned to Federal employees. The contracting multi-national corporations and workers – many of which are not even domiciled in the USA or citizens thereof – are sucking up trillions of dollars which our children and grandchildren must repay.

Their frontline workers – most often Third World coolies living in upscale concentration camps – displace local “unreliable” labor in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are compliant and work for a few dollars a day. American corporate overseers are given five- and six-figure incomes (no taxes) to crack the whip, and the major shareholders, officers and directors bathe in the blood-soaked profits.

WORST of all: by contracting “security” responsibilities to third parties such as Blackwater/XE, we have in effect hired hitmen to perform tasks which cannot be done by American military personnel without violation of the Constitution or Rules of Engagement under the UCMJ. These contractors have killed, maimed and tortured with impunity – under the protective umbrella of the fictional “War on Terror”.

Thus by proxy we Americans become terrorists: hiring arms-length surrogates to kill innocent civilians (“collateral damage”) to advance the economic aims of the Few, the Wealthy, the Elite.

We Americans were told that 9/11 had something to do with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, as Tony Blair has recently reiterated in remarks at the Iraq Inquiry. By repeating the same lies, Blair still expects Brits and rest of the world to somehow accept the conclusion that the 9/11 assault on the WTC and other targets by Wahadi Saudis could be avenged by an attack on a third party: Iraq.

Enter the contractors. In order to accomplish the true purposes of the War on Iraq, British and American governments have paid mercenaries to do that which an American or British soldier could not – hampered as we are by the Geneva Conventions. So, our hired guns can kill, rape and pillage – immune from all legal consequence – and the interests of multi-national profiteers is advanced.

Under a true Free Market, Iraqi citizens should be free to determine who (if anyone) helps them develop their (not ours or BP’s) vast oil and gas reserves. Their own national fate – to fight among themselves or create a true unified federal government is theirs to choose. How can we impose any form of government on a foreign land?

According to former President Bush, the War on Terror constitutes “…the hunt for an enemy that … cannot stand freedom … [and] does not believe in free speech, free religion, free dissent, does not believe in women's rights, and they have a desire to impose their ideology on much of the world.”

We have met the enemy, and he is us!