Think That Hole In the Southwest Plane Is Scary? The GOP's Plan to Gut Airline Regulation Is What's Truly Frightening

The airline industry has been in the news recently due to the Southwest Airlines flight that developed a gaping hole in the fuselage and had to make an emergency landing. This led not only to a number of traumatized passengers, but to the grounding of flights for inspections and the tying up of Southwest schedules throughout the country.

As Salon's resident aviation expert and "ask the pilot" columnist Patrick Smith notes, Southwest is a "short-haul" airline with quick turnarounds, which means its planes experience the pressurization cycle over and over again, leaving them more vulnerable to these kinds of cracks. And when safety regulations fail to curtail this drive to push machines and employees to the limit, lives can be lost. In 2009, the fatal crash of the Continental Airlines flight over Buffalo was attributed partly to exhausted pilots who had worked multiple flights in a row without much sleep. Clearly, for the sake of passengers, the drive for profit in airlines must to be counteracted by strong safety measures and tough regulations. But if the House GOP has its way, the opposite will happen.

While plenty of attention has been payed in recent days to the safety issues with Southwest's fleet, there's also a gaping hole in the GOP's concern for airline employees' rights--the people who keep us safe in the event of an emergency. Yes, there's a major fight brewing in congress over the Federal Aviation Association re-authorization bill. As the AP describes it, "The $59.7 billion Republican-drafted bill is a blueprint for Federal Aviation Administration programs for the next three and a half years." But the bill is attracting heat because its budget cuts are so drastic as to impact safety--and also roll back workers' rights. While the Senate's version of the bill is relatively standard, the House bill presents a raft of major issues for both passengers and workers, from poor safety regulations to anti-organizing clauses that would make it harder for employees to form unions and negotiate.

On Friday, Think Progress reported on one of the more heinous provisions in the bill, which would roll back several new provisions to prevent the overworking that leads to pilot fatigue, one of the presumed causes of the deadly crash in Buffalo:

But today, the Republican House of Representatives passed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) to a Republican-drafted aviation bill that would essentially gut the planned pilot fatigue rules by requiring extensive tailoring to many different segments of the aviation industry, and exempting several others.

Other provisions in the bill--which passed the House--would roll back gains made by the union movement. Until recently, a vote of airline employees fighting to unionize would have abstentions count as a no vote. But the National Mediation Board with new members appointed by Obama, in a major victory for fairness, voted that these elections should be like any other--with no and yes votes being weighed equally against each other, minus abstentions. The reason this type of election is so vital is common sense--people who choose not to participate in the process, particularly in a workplace atmosphere where internal politics may have a strong impact, should be able to do so without having their votes count against unionization. According to the Huffington Post's report on the bill:

Sponsored by House Transportation Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.)—a major recipient of campaign contributions from the airline industry, totaling more than $620,000 in his career—the controversial provision states if an eligible voter fails to vote for union representation, he or she will be tallied as an active vote against representation.