Politics & Power Quote by David Neeleman

A little corporate candor slips out here, and it is not flattering. Neeleman frames unionization as a legal technicality to be “resisted,” not a democratic choice to be respected. The line is doing two things at once: acknowledging workers have a federally protected right to organize, while calmly describing a strategy to make that right irrelevant in practice.

The phrase “our own people” is the tell. It sounds warm, even familial, but it also stakes a claim of ownership: employees are positioned as part of management’s domain rather than independent actors with their own leverage. That possessive framing is classic union-avoidance rhetoric, meant to substitute loyalty for bargaining power. “Dealing with the people we’re paying every day” reduces the relationship to a transaction - wages as the central proof of good faith - and quietly dismisses the idea that paychecks don’t automatically equal voice.

Then comes the real subtext: “giving them enough upside.” Not justice, not partnership, not shared governance - upside. Benefits and perks become a calculated counter-offer to collective action, an attempt to keep dissatisfaction below the threshold where workers decide they need a union. It’s a management playbook move: address symptoms (raises, better schedules, nicer culture messaging) to prevent the disease (organized labor) from taking root.

Context matters: in service industries like airlines, unions are a structural threat to managerial flexibility. Neeleman’s tone is almost relaxed, which is what makes it sharp. He’s describing union resistance as ordinary business, not a moral conflict. That normalcy is the point - and the power.