Union joins protest over foreign airline subsidies

The AFL-CIO’s Transport Workers Union (TWU) is joining the partnership that has been formed by U.S. airline groups to oppose subsidies for international carriers. 

The coalition of U.S. aviation groups, which is known as the Partnership For Open and Fair Skies, is arguing that Middle Eastern airlines like Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates Airlines have received more than $42 billion in subsidies since 2004.

The airlines say the subsidies violate the spirit of the Open Skies agreements between the U.S. and the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which own the airlines. 

{mosads}The airline partnership said Thursday that it is glad to have the transport workers’ union on board. 

“TWU understands that the massive subsidies provided to the Gulf carriers are jeopardizing American jobs and the economy,” Partnership for Open Skies spokeswoman Jill Zuckman said in a statement. “It’s not just hundreds of thousands of airline employees who will pay the price if the Gulf carriers are allowed to continue violating the Open Skies agreements. These workers and the U.S. airlines drive more than $1.4 trillion in economic activity and more than 11 million American jobs.” 

The fight over the Open Skies agreements has exposed a rift between airlines and travel and consumer groups, who argue that U.S. airlines are trying to prevent competition for international flights. 

The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Travel Association accused the airlines of hypocrisy this week, citing a report from the Library of Congress’s independent Congressional Research Service that said domestic airlines received $155 billion in subsidies from 1919 to 1998. 

“The Big Three U.S. airlines have constructed themselves an enormous glass house, and their amnesia about their own subsidies has now cost them the credibility of their own core argument for breaking Open Skies agreements,” the Travel Association’s executive vice president for public affairs, Jonathan Grella, said on Wednesday. 

“This exposes the fiction that the U.S. airline cartel’s furious and expensive assault on Open Skies is about subsidies,” he continued. We hope this prompts policymakers and the public to ask: OK, what’s really motivating the campaign to break these agreements? We hope there is something else to dissuade us from by far the most likely conclusion: the Big Three airlines hate competition, and rather than cope with it in the marketplace they will undertake extreme means to stamp it out politically.” 

The airline coalition counters that the comparision between current foreign airline subsidies and older payments to U.S. carriers is unfair because the distributions to domestic carriers were made before the Open Skies agreements were signed.

“It is laughable that a two-decade-old unpublished paper examining U.S. aviation since 1918 is being trumpeted as ‘evidence’ that U.S. airlines are supported the way that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar routinely subsidize their airlines,” Zuckman said. “Funding for air mail, Post Office support, and the National Weather Service is a far cry from the well-documented $42 billion dollars in direct subsidies and other unfair state support the Middle East carriers receive.” 

Zuckman said Thursday that the federal government should review the subsidies that are being given to foreign airlines ” toensure U.S. airlines and their workers are operating on a level playing field with their state-funded competitors in the Middle East.

“TWU and the other members of the Partnership are asking the U.S. government to open consultations with Qatar and United Arab Emirates and to seek a freeze on new Gulf carrier capacity while those talks take place,” she said. “Otherwise, the increasingly enormous subsidies that Qatar and the UAE are providing to their state-owned airlines will harm U.S. consumers and businesses.”

-This story was updated with new information at 4:48 p.m.