Section Fiveunionized. As mentioned earlier, at Southwest Airlines, which is
perennially in the top four on Fortune’s list of the 100 Best
Companies to Work For, 84 to 85 percent of its employees are
represented by unions.^45
Strikes
The relationship between strikes and the financial performance
of struck firms has been empirically examined using
shareholder returns. One study found that after relatively long
strikes (11 to 29 days), shareholder returns tended to increase.
Conversely, after short strikes (1 to 10 days), the firms’
financial performance tended to decline, and after extremely
long strikes (30 days or more), shareholder returns tended to
decline dramatically. These results provide evidence of the
conventional wisdom that companies win longer strikes (11 to
29 days) and that unions win short strikes (1 to 10 days). For
the extremely long strikes, financial returns decreased
dramatically up to 24 months after the strike, perhaps because
the parties’ relationship may have taken on aspects of a death
marriage.^46
The recent strikes at American Airlines and Boeing, which
involved highly educated pilots, engineers, and technicians,
were unique because college-educated, unionized professionals
were striking. In the Boeing strike, there were several issues of