If what airsupport says is correct it sounds more of a political decision rather than economic. I guess the question is how many accidents are you willing to wear to save your labour costs.
Of course, everything I say here is correct..............
The decision to take away driving the tugs on pushouts from Engineers definitely was political.
As I said before though the Companies refused to allow Engineers to be removed from towing, and oddly we also kept doing pushouts from terminals IF the Aircraft was going on a test, training or ferry flight, we were removed from ALL revenue flights.
I am not sure about the taking away of LAMEs from pushouts altogether, that is off the headsets even.