You really should do more careful research before attacking people who are dealing with a bankrupt carrier as opposed to a profitable one like SWA.
Bankrupt? With $4.5 billion in cash and 500 new airplanes coming?
The courts "assume " that a company would not file for BK unless they needed to, AA pretty much admitted from the get go that this was purely a strategy, not their only alternative. The court chose to ignore that.
AA self financed their BK, so obviously they were not broke.
At one time the courts made the same assumptions as far as individual BK, then they realized that many people were scamming the system, and they changed the laws to try and crack down on the scamming. So far they have failed to do the same for corporations.
When people filed for BK it was the banks that ended up getting screwed, so they changed the law, howver when corporations scam in BK the workers get screwed, so the law stands. Even though Corporations have been granted the rights of individuals they have not been charged with the same responsibilities as individuals.
And our Union does nothing to correct this.
You say that people should do more careful research, well you are right, they should. Are you aware that labor contracts were supposed to be afforded special protections under BK? That in order for the court to abrogate that the company was supposed to show that the contract was "onerous". One of the early cases involved a printing company, the contract called for them to employ workers who jobs were redundant due to technological changes that the company, and its competitors had put in place. The contract forcing the employer to pay people it did not need was considered onerous, so it met the standard and was abrogated. The 2nd District Court took a much more pro company view on the onerous standard. once again relying on the asumption that the company would not be asking for relief unless there was no other way to stay in business, even if its pretty obvious there are other options. Bankruptcy is there to provide a level playing field for an ailing company to get relief from terms that make it so they can not compete, it is not supposed to be a blank check where companys are given a cost advantage over their peers by court mandates. What has evolved in the airline industry, as the unions sat on their hands is an abomination of Justice, and we are at fault for not challenging it.
AMFA’s agreement with bankrupt UAL in 2005 required an up front 3.9% percent cut in base pay and premiums and then a 1.5% yearly pay increase for the next five years. By the end of the contract, AMFA mechanics had received a whopping 51 cents in aggregate base pay increases.
You have got to be kidding, you cant be that stupid.
So in other words in BK it was not a six (plus four plus six) year deal like ours. How many years, both pre and post BK did UAL go without any pay increases? Did they go four years with no increases like we did? We gave concessions supposedly to stay out of BK, we took a 17.5% paycut, in addition to vacation, Holidays and other concessions which brought it up to 25% and
from 2003 to 2012 only got back 7%. for an aggregate pay cut of $3.97 over a 10 year period without going BK!!,
Per the new agreement our aggregate houly rate will have only gone from $37,24 in 2003 to $37.67 in 2018.
You are citing how their pay went up a whopping 51 cents over five years while ours as written will go up a whopping 43 cents over 15 years!!!!
If you want to forget the past fine, forget it, lets look at the present, what does UAL currently get and what do we get? Remember BK is there to relive companies from onerous terms, not create a condition where competitors end up under comparatively onerous tersms with the BK entity.
You even admit that all our raises over the next six years will not bring us up to what they are making now.
Sure you can cite that we have the Mid Term Wage adjustment LOM, and that our wage is so far below industry standard that we would already be slated for a raise if it were to come in effect now, but who knows, Jim already agreed to dump two LOMs already. Whats stopping him from dumping that one as well? Whats stopping USAIR from buying us and going BK in two years and throwing it out in exchange for promising to keep work in Tulsa they cant outsource anyway like we did last August? All it takes is Jim Little signature.
And it agreed to termination of the UAL pension plan.
So did the TWU, it was the PBGC and the CC that squashed it because they did not want the PBGC to be the biggest shareholder of the company.
And there was no industry standard pay adjustment.
Good thing, if they had one, thanks to US and AA they would take a pay cut.
The Mid Term wage adjustment is basically an admission that they want the IBT and IAM and Non-Union Delta mechanics to fight for a wage and after three years they will bring us up to the average. they obviously feel that going for what AMFA negotiated at WN is way beyond what they feel their members are worth.
An AA mechanic will get at least $5.70 in pay increases (approximately 21 percent) during the agreement
Step back and look at the big picture, over a 15 year period and one BK filing AA mechanics will have seen their pay increase by 43 cents, but they will have a week less vacation, lost up to 80 hours of Holiday pay each year, 7 less sick days, they will pay around $4000 a year for medical coverage, lost 70 IOD day, lost their pension, retiree medical, doubletime and scores of other concessions.
.
I say, at least, because that doesn’t cover the industry standard pay adjustment, which will now be adjusted up to the DAL/UAL average at the end of the third year.
But that adjustment will not factor in the vacation, Holidays, sick time, doubletime or any of the other concession that put us at the very bottom of the industry. All in we are even below USAIR and they are in contract talks. So even if Little does not sign it away, even with the adjustment we will still almost certainly still be at the very bottom of the industry for the next six years.
