1) DHL started in the US in 1969 and became German owned a little after 2002 (it has a pretty cool origin story where the founder felt there was a better way to deliver overnight goods to Hawaii than to literally sit a person on a plane and stuff legal documents in his luggage. He used his student loans to... "bootstrap"). IMO the article loses some credibility by using "foreign competition" verbiage a lot to emotionally sway the reader.
2) Is DHL skirting regulator rules and putting pilots in unsafe conditions? Regulations need to first and foremost be in place to prevent deadly disasters.
3) It sounds like pilots are losing their market power in the labor market (supply is increasing faster than demand) leading to lower wages and benefits and worse scheduling policies. This is a place where unions typically would play as a way for laborers to gain back their market power. Not sure the union conditions in the airline industry but I'm guessing there are issues with global labor competition that's making this difficult. We as a society need to understand how globalization (and now automation!) is/will effect every job on the planet.
> DHL started in the US in 1969 and became German owned a little after 2002
Wow, thanks for pointing this out. I've been under the mistaken impression that DHL was always German (and that German precision is why they were better than the competition), and I'd assumed DHL stood for Deutsche Something Something.
[From the DHL company history: "On 25 September 1969, Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom and Robert Lynn (the D, H and L in our company name) incorporate DHL."]
>and that German precision is why they were better than the competition
To me seeing that my package will be shipped with them is a negative since I've never had a positive experience. Is a bit better now that I'm regional so they basically only control the package until customs but still bit great before it reaches the country.
I'm in Australia, so it could be a different experience here (and my Amazon deliveries here are still superior to DHL & other providers).
The one that really makes my heart sink is Toll - anytime I see "delivered by Toll", I know there's only a 50% chance of my parcel arriving. [The last time I had to pick up a parcel from a collection point, I overheard someone calling out "Can't use Chrome for that, Toll requires IE6 for the log-in"]
And worth pointing out that this is a very rare case where subcontractors are not used because it's cheaper. DHL is legally not allowed to own an airline which flies domestically within the US. Works the other way around (Fedex and UPS have EU flights) but no European airline can fly within the US.
I'm quite sure that otherwise, they'd fly themselves as they own all airlines flying for them within the EU and Asia (except the ones that also fly to US).
1) DHL started in the US in 1969 and became German owned a little after 2002 (it has a pretty cool origin story where the founder felt there was a better way to deliver overnight goods to Hawaii than to literally sit a person on a plane and stuff legal documents in his luggage. He used his student loans to... "bootstrap"). IMO the article loses some credibility by using "foreign competition" verbiage a lot to emotionally sway the reader.
2) Is DHL skirting regulator rules and putting pilots in unsafe conditions? Regulations need to first and foremost be in place to prevent deadly disasters.
3) It sounds like pilots are losing their market power in the labor market (supply is increasing faster than demand) leading to lower wages and benefits and worse scheduling policies. This is a place where unions typically would play as a way for laborers to gain back their market power. Not sure the union conditions in the airline industry but I'm guessing there are issues with global labor competition that's making this difficult. We as a society need to understand how globalization (and now automation!) is/will effect every job on the planet.