Global Airport Workers Against Globalization: The International Solidarity of Aviation Unions in the Neoliberal Era

Aviation is one of the industries that defines globalization, having accelerated the annihilation of space by time. Aviation workers helped build globalization, and their role in that process has also made them acutely aware of its contradictions.

This paper uses material from the International Transport Workers’ Federation archives, particularly the Europe and Africa sections, to examine how aviation workers became part of an “anti-globalization” movement in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Aviation workers at many flag carriers resisted the privatization forced on them by the creation of the European single market and the US advocacy for “Open Skies” agreements, arguing that this violated the spirit of the Chicago system, which had provided for even the smallest country to retain aviation sovereignty. In 1994 they even held a “birthday party” for the Chicago Convention that felt more like a funeral, since the card depicted the Convention being devoured by a monstrous plane.

Aviation workers also protested the fact that even as their employers were becoming privatized and profit-oriented, they were increasingly expected to perform functions of the state, especially immigration policing and deportation. Many unions launched strikes and solidarity strikes against these new functions. France was periodically forced to halt deportations because of solidarity strikes at African airports.

The moment of aviation worker militancy was cut short by the September 11, 2001 attacks, which led to new regulations around protest at airports and by airport workers. This paper centers the 1990s and early 2000s as a moment of aviation union militancy and as a moment of conversations about the purpose of aviation. The climate movement has once again forced us to ask what flying is for and whether it is worth its costs. Aviation’s anti-globalization decade offers a necessary perspective.