Of course, but taken to its logical conclusion one would then conclude that the best solution for US is to sell all of the planes, fire everyone but res, and rake in major coin. Better yet, fire res, too, and just sell tickets on the 'net.
Of course, that's absurd because the product has to be created to be sold. So you have to look at the whole picture. Every employee must create value in some way to justify the employee's continued employment. If, for example, the value added (defined as the customers' additional willingness to pay) by having catering onboard is greater than the cost of having catering onboard, then catering should stay.
The easiest way to calculate that value-add is to ask how much customers would be willing to pay if the service in question were removed, and compare that to how much customers are willing to pay with the service in place. Not all aspects of the airline are this easy to calculate, however.
This approach needs to apply to every employee, from CEO on down. If your employment costs the company more than the value-add, you're by definition a liability.
So what's the value-add of a res agent? Realistically, with the shift toward online purchases, the value has dropped. It's zero for a certain segment of the population. For another segment of the population, the web site has done nothing to reduce the value of a res agent. What's the net effect? Hard to say without doing some market research, but empirically it looks like the value has dropped overall.
It's really hard to watch a career that one has built start to crumble around oneself. Especially when it's caused almost entirely by external forces. Worst of all, there are no obvious solutions to the problem. I doubt, for example, that AFA will take a paycut in order to keep more CWA employees employed.
