If the environment itself isn’t enough to persuade you that you are nothing more than a cog to the upper management/shareholders, there are plenty of other, even more exasperating reminders. You are making around $3 less per hour than anybody else at SeaTac (including other airline employees, restaurant employees, car rental employees, bus drivers, etc.), although there are benefits! Health insurance and stock options might be nice, but they don’t pay the rent. However, a vast majority of the ground service agents are men under age 30, so insurance and stock options mean nothing to them. They become empty gestures from a management who knows you’ll never use them, and thus cost the company little.
But that's only one part of the picture. To be clear, the people I worked with were dedicated, hard working, safety-conscious, attempting to be loyal—all of the things that are supposed to get you ahead in America. But the workers on the ground and our immediate supervisors could barely keep our heads above water. As a subsidiary of Alaska Air Group, Horizon Air is the proverbial red-headed stepchild. It is glaringly clear to everyone who works there that cost-cutting by the executive team(s) in order to keep the shareholders happy is the main goal, and Horizon is the first stop on the belt-tightening train.