tgwu stn,
What a one sided view of the world you have. It's all the 'managements' fault and the 'good, hard working workers are never to blame'.
There have been many posts about the 'ups and downs' of Servisair and ground handling in general.
A few facts:
Servisair is one of the 3 largest independent (of airline or state ownership)ground handing in thbe world. Which is the largest depends on what you measure. The other 2: Menzies and Swissport.
Servisair have made a lot of senior Head Office (EVP, SVP, VP and Director level) people redundant and have not recruited at their HQ to reduce overheads. In the last week more names have been added to the 'at risk' list and will be gone before the year end. I think you will find that the MAN HQ have taken the highest toll in this exercise followed by the US HQ, which was moved from NYC to Dallas (I think).
Cargo and Ground Handling in Europe are run by the same guy now. Another guy has responsibility for Americas.
Cargo and ground handling are very different markets - the ground handling of the cargo buisness is a very small revenue earner in the business as a whole.
I would agree that Servisair's overheads have got too high, the multi-level management structure has left the airport manager too far removed from the CEO. Some of that has been taken out already, more is in the pipeline.
The strategy of 'supporting the weak' is not new, it was a culture of many years ago and protects individual airports from the cyclical ways of the industry. In a big organisation it is not unusual; the key is identifying the dead wood and cutting it out - not something that Servisair have been very good at. I am old enough to remember years and years when STN did not make any money; it relied on either LHR or LGW being fog bound for a few days every year to pick up huge diversion work to pay the bills; sometimes it managed it, many times it did not.
When a business loses as much as Servisair did in 05 and again in 06 there has to be change; holding a hard line with proicing is one aspect of this, there is no point in 'buying' business as there is neither the money to staff it or equip it. look what the FR contract did for Servisair at STN!