"Trouble at Alitalia," or, "How unions seem to be screwing everything up"

I'm not an expert in international bankruptcy laws, nor am I overly familiar with the specific situation that seems to be unfolding in Italy. From what I've read, however, the Italian state carrier, Alitalia, ("state" carrier means the Italian people/govt own 49.9% of the company) seems to be in trouble. Today it cancelled 20-30% of its flights from Rome, and the speculation is that it has run out of money to buy fuel. Given the high cost of jet fuel today, that's not an unreasonable claim. To compound the problem, (and again, this comes from what I've read) the company's 9 unions have continued to vote against any sort of "rescue" operations (mergers with Air France/KLM, purchases by consortia, etc) because such actions would result in job losses. I mean, that's all and good to want to save every possible job, but get with the program, people! If the entire company goes under, that might be just a little worse than a few thousand losses, don't ya think?!!

Anyway, it'll be interesting to follow in the coming days and weeks.