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NPR’s Ailsa Chang spoke with United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby yesterday about vaccine mandates and forced Kirby to go beyond her usual talking points on the issue of mandatory vaccines… for customers.
United Airlines CEO questions mandatory vaccines for customers
Kirby is often asked about mandatory vaccines for airline passengers and has a carefully written answer out of the box:
SWITCH : In practice, however, I mean, no matter how hard you try to vaccinate your employees, they far outnumber all the passengers who board your planes. Are there any plans to mandate passenger vaccinations or require proof of vaccination before you can get on your planes, I mean, just in the interests of fairness to your employees?
KIRBY: I think the requirement for vaccines for passengers is really a government issue. To do that, we would probably need some kind of government directive. We have prepared ourselves with the technology to be able to download immunization maps and track that and implement it if the government ever chooses to go in that direction.
That’s Kirby’s standard answer: Leave it to the government. But Chang pushed back.
SWITCH : Well, I mean, there are some bars in this country that require vaccination before people can get into the bar. Broadway imposes vaccines. Why is it the government to impose vaccines when it comes to airlines, but not in other cases?
KIRBY: Well, we’re, you know, a federally regulated industry. And, you know, people are in the terminals. It’s not just our customers. So you go through a security check, it’s to all airlines. These are the TSA employees. These are the airport employees. And so it’s just an environment where I don’t think it’s appropriate for us as a sole proprietorship to make that decision and really a decision that we would need the federal government to take the lead in.
Swing and a miss!
Chang’s question is premonitory. If United can get away with vaccine warrants for their employees and effectively sideline those with valid exemptions, then I don’t know what would prevent them from demanding the same from passengers.
Kirby’s observation that the airline industry is highly regulated is correct, but it doesn’t really answer the question. Certainly, talking about how airports and security checkpoints mix up customers from different airlines is an elusive answer.
Vaccines are a collective action issue, but distinct from airport security in that even if the government decided not to intervene in the airport security sector, airlines would still insist on security.
The TSA was created to streamline and coordinate airline security; he didn’t start anything new, but grew from at least two decades of private practice.
Travel vaccinations are common for vaccinations like yellow fever or smallpox. While Kirby is correct that it would theoretically make sense to have a uniform policy, I’m not sure there is anything that prevents an airline from introducing one, other than the fact that that would be very bad for business.
And that’s the elephant in the room. Kirby might not admit it, but he doesn’t want a vaccination warrant as that would make 1/3 of Americans ineligible to fly on United.
Why then the salaried mandate? Because he thinks it will be good for business and can put non-compliant employees on leave or fire, which also saves money during the slower fall and winter months.
CONCLUSION
I appreciate that Chang forced Kirby out of the script. His diplomatic approach of “leaving it to the government”, however, ignores what I imagine his main concern: a vaccine warrant would be very bad for business.
You can listen to the full interview here:
image: Scott Kirby / Instagram
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