Yes AFW is closed for AO but still open for TAESL and those are TWU jobs. Yes some work is being outsourced but nowhere near what was done at UA, CO,US, DL, or NW under the BK agreements there. The TWU did do a much better job at protecting jobs than any of those places and their unions (or non-union at DL). AMFA, IBT, and the IAM saw far more jobs go out the door and families disrupted than with the TWU.
Protecting jobs? Really? Fewer families disrupted? Every family has seen disruption resulting from the loss of half our pay, the loss of vacation and Holidays, sick time and IOD. We didnt save jobs, we destroyed them. Dreams of college for our kids crushed, hopes for a retirement wiped out.
But as those airplanes age, then work goes up, and so do the jobs that will be done inside as well. The TWU scope clause protects future work, the AMFA and IBT scope clauses do not.
By the time that happens even our contract will be amendable, in other words the protections you claim it provides wont go into effect until long after this deal has been renegotiated, and its looking that most likely it will be renegoted by another union.
No more pay cuts for the foreseeable future
Wrong, we are pretty much guaranteed a paycut every year with medical benefit increases and increases in deductables and copays. As AA hires more part timers in Fleet it will drive up medical costs for everyone else. Aa saves money in salaries and passes the increased medical costs on to us.
When the automatic wage adjustment kicks in - not in any BK CBA by AMFA, IBT, or IAM - you will be able to buy more satin jackets.
None of them went into BK at the bottom of the industry and then went another 20% lower. Going down to five Holidays at half pay, as little as one week of vacation, and no doubletime
ever wasnt in any BK by AMFA, IBT or IAM either, oh yes, thats right, we gave all that up
before BK. Did UAL, or Delta ever end up $4/hr behind AA? Did they ever end up with fewer holidays, less vacation and less sick time, even when they were in BK and we werent? NO!!!
Between now and the wage adjustment, three years from now, how much more money will we lose? I figure just on straight time hours around $25,000 in wages, around $11,000 in Holiday pay, and around $5000 in vacation. Even in BK our peers at UAL or Delta never fell as far behind us are we have fallen behind them. You come here and try and spin this as "we gave up less in BK than anyone else", yet leave out the very important point that we went in with less than anyone else, there was nothing left to take!!!.
I agree, we need to get the FAA to make the playing field level for all. Time for the membership and all unions to unite, organize the unorganized, and stop raiding other airline's membership. Corporate America is laughing their butts off while we destroy ourselves.
Unions need to be willing to fight. The TWU allowed AA to stonewall for four years and never demanded to be released. Judges, legislators and the FAA should not be expected to fight our fight.
I am living these cuts. I wanted to get a bigger pay raise like you but listen, if we had gone to abrogation then there is a strong possibility that all or most of AO in TULE and DWH would be gone.
Really? What are you basing that claim on? Where would they have sent all that work? You are aware that the company shared a study that proclaimed that with narrow body OH "Capacity is tight". That the company admitted that if they did try and outsource NB OH that they would likely have to pay a premium to get places to do the work, they even factored in the premium to show that there would be minimal cost savings from outsourcing. If AAR and other outfits are having trouble retaining mechanics to do the work they already have how could they have taken on more work?
Those pesky T-Town boys (your words) would be gone from T-Town but a lot of them would be in MIA, JFK, LAX, DFW, ORD, etc...bumping thousands out of the line.
You seem to forget that the average age of mechanics at AA is 55. Most in T town, like many did in AFW, would retire or leave the company before they bumped to MIA, JFK, LAX or ORD. JFK is looking for 60 guys. Not one mechanic from NY was bumped to the street.
No early out would have driven thousands that were not bumped under the current CBA package.
United guys were offered $75 k. early outs save the company a lot of money and lower average costs. Since layoffs are done from the bottom the result is the youngest, cheapest workers are the ones eliminated, and the way things are once they leave AA they would not come back, they would refuse recall like 90% of the recalls to NY1 did.
With 3,000 to 4,000 AO, back shop, and other support jobs gone to low paying MRO's around the world AA management could give us our geo-pay.
How much less does AAR or Spirit pay compared to AA? Not starting wages but top wages. Here in NY I believe the top paid mechanics at AAR earn just shy of $30/hr. Granted ther are few of them and they are non-union but then again they dont work outside or have to commute to the airport either. How much are our OSMs in the back shops earning? The fact is that AA has become a low paying airline that isnt that far off in pay compared to the MROs that you speak of. The fact is that our wages are so low its not cost effective to send NB work out domestically (oh yes, thats right, our deal doesnt have restrictions on where they send the work like United and WN have, AA can send any work any where), the work staying in house has nothing to do with the language in Article 1, it has to do with the numbers in Article 4, 5 6 etc. thats not fighting, thats rolling over and giving the company everything they could ever want. People do not join unions to get them bottom of the industry wages and work rules, they join unions to not end up that way.
In 2003 Little told us to give the concessions because if we gave concessions the BK would be eaiser. He siad its not a matter of "if" but when the company would file. Then his experts admitted that we would have been better off going into BK fat than skinny. We were at the bottom going into this, now we have seen new depths as far as how deep the bottom can be, and you guys brought us here. Keep saying that you saved jobs, eveybody knows that what youy really did was make sure AA got everything a company could ever want out of a union.