High Altitude Outsourcing

It was on the front page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) :
Northwest Targets Flight Attendants For Outsourcing: Ailing Carrier Seeks Savings By Pushing Veteran Staffers Off Prized Overseas Routes.
Flight attendants are not the only ones being considered for these changes. Here’s a copy/paste from a paragraph in the article:

Northwest also is seeking to outsource all ramp workers’ positions except at its hubs and all customer-service-agent jobs at its non-hub airports.

If this happens, maintaining morale among remaining employees will not be an easy task, which will impact the quality of the service that customers get.

Coming soon: outsourced pilots. Any bets?