Steve Connell said:
Bob, what kind of shape is your local in? And whose fault is it if it is not the local you desire? You lay blame everywhere except at yourself and other mechanics. And Bob, I stated God assist our children. Meaning our children will have to change professions and suffer in ways we have not, may God help them, now spin that big boy. Where did you read I blamed God?, you're big on picking away at what people post and in doing so you show your arrogance matches your physique. You may be a self proclaimed saint and miracle worker in NY but not here. However Bob, I was glad to see you keep it to one sentence, you on a patch?
The more blatant division we witness here is thrown at us by management, not the unions. They used to tell us "produce or the work will go south", that threat is gone now, work went south regardless. I see base pitted against base for work, different than what we had at TWA, we only had one O/H plant so it was not an issue.
If AMFA would get in at AA I do not believe you'd have to worry about a split floor. Those that voted for AMFA and wanted it so bad will more than likely be furloughed at first contract signing. Actually I do not believe any mechanics were furloughed from NWA, it's just a hoax by the TWU to confuse those in the cheese lines. Are your friends making a good living away from NWA? I do hope for them the best. Oh yeah, what percentage are furloughed according to AMFA? 10000-5000=?
Supervisor Steve;
I have no problem with our Local. The problems I have with this Union lies beyond our Local, where all the important decisions are made, beyond electoral accountability. My problems with this Union are with the International, the unelected dictators who take our money and own our contract.
You say that I lay the blame everywhere else. OK Steve who is to blame for the twenty years of concessionary contracts that the union told the members to accept? Please be specific.
And why will our children suffer Steve? Perhaps because their parents never had the courage to fight back? Instead of fighting to improve things we accepted less and less because we did not have the guts to stand up and fight?
I often heard top union officials complain about the "lack of participation" being the cause of our decline. They claimed that they could have brought back better contracts if the members had participated more but never say how. Never say how to participate or how it would have made a difference. The fact is that every concessionary agreement came back with the endorsement of the union, and was voted in, the one time in my career here at AA that the union recommended rejection the members rejected it, and that rejected agreement was far superior to what just got put in place.
So explain to me Steve, if the membership does exactly what the International told them to do then how can the membership be accused of not supporting the leadership? If the members have supported the leaders then whose fault is our decline?
Picking away? Why not? Are you saying that all your posts are objective and sincere? If you cant take it go back to using your alias. You need to learn the golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have do unto you". I try to follow that, however if that fails to make an impression then I follow the Brooklyn version of the golden rule "do to them as they do to you".
We have come to expect the company to keep us split up, however we should expect to see our union fight against this. The fact is that our Union was involved in a committee with the company that made base compete against base and station competes against station. The threat was if you did not meet the company's expectation at this station they would move the work to another station. Bobby Gless was on this committee. As president of Local 562 he encouraged his members to work harder so they could take checks away from other stations. Other local Presidents fell into this same trap. All of this came down through the International. You can blame the company, but we do not pay the company to look out for our best interests, we do however pay the TWU.
Did NWA have 10,000 A&P mechanics? Wow! NWA has what, 200 airplanes and they had 10,000 A&P mechanics!? AA has around 800 airplanes and they only have about 10000 A&P mechanics. So NWA had around 50 A&P mechanics per airplane and still has around 25 A&P mechanics per airplane while AA has around 12 A&P mechanics per airplane.
So using your figures of 10,000-5000 NWA would have to lay off another 2000 A&P mechanics to get their ratio down to ours. At that point they would be equal to us as far as A&P mechanic per aircraft.
