What?
Building on many of the other HR roadmap items, especially employee cohorts and reworked staff mood, this feature would add various aspects of workers’ representation to the game.
In its most basic form, this could mean that the workforce proactively demand pay increases or other benefits. The player then can accept those demands or start negotiations. If no agreement can be reached, consequences range from negative impact on staff mood to outright strikes.
Whether and when workers organise could be influenced by players…happy employees might see no need to organise, while “certain measures” might prevent unions from finding their way into the company, at the cost of soured staff mood, legal costs, staff fluctuation etc.
The “aggressiveness” of demands would be influenced by factors like the general state of the company, the economic situation - locally or world-wide - and the activities of potential daughter-, sister- or parent-companies (classic example: mainline pilots getting mad at new pilots only being hired for low-cost branch).
Generally, a holding-level aspect would be an interesting mechanic. Think solidary strikes in one subsidiary because workers in another are treated poorly.
Why?
This feature is a great tool to increase the challenge for large and experienced players while offering lots of knobs and dials to give subtle bonuses to new startups. It’s also something that should generally add more interactive gameplay (think negotiations) without forcing tedious day-to-day tasks on players.
When?
Depends on the general rework of the HR feature but can only really shine once we’ve made operations more dynamic, first and foremost by means of Auto-Ops / Aircraft Pools such that the most extreme form of worker action - strikes - doesn’t immediately wreck havoc with an airline.