APA & APFA did better then TWU in BK…WHY?

[NYer]

Outsourced? so what do you think transferring mainline flying to eagle is?
I guess you think it is OK for us to have a matching 401K and the other unions do not have to match. Read the topic title again. It is about how we did NOT do better than the APA and APFA. 16% and 10% is better than 5.5% Guess who has the 5.5%?  What happened to our profit sharing? So the APA still has profit sharing and we do not. Sounds like they did better than us.

 
The APA and APFA don't have to spend resources in order to prevent outsourcing such as the rest of us have to deal with. Where an AA plane flies they must have flight attendants and pilots, no so for most of the other groups. With that comes and expense that cannot be turned into the 401K because keeping jobs is a fight that most effects us.
 
In the Fleet group, they have to contend with the issues of PT and FT.
 
Now, there are issues we have that can considered a positive (although probably not from those with the AMFA agenda), which is every Members benefits from the 5.5. Not so with the APFA who has a sliding scale depending on your age and with the new hires getting something like 3.5%.
 
Then you have the APA that has to contend with the possibility that sometime in the future they could lose most of their retirement payments since the PBGC only guarantees up to a certain level which the pilots on average go over that amount so they could still lose big time. We, on the other hand, would have the majority, if not all, of our vested pension protected by the PBGC.
 
It is almost infantile to make comparisons simply by number....If that were the case then I'd be more upset the pilots make $200 an hour and the flight attendants make over $45 an hour.

 

[700UW]

Yes the APA and AFA has to, ever hear of  a regional jet, Mesa, AE, Skywest, etc....?

 

[NYer]

Yes the APA and AFA has to, ever hear of  a regional jet, Mesa, AE, Skywest, etc....?

The point is they can't be outsourced from mainline flying. We can and we have to deal with that issue while others don't.

In a situation with regionals, we all lose.

 

[Thomas Paine]

They cant be outsourced? Wrong, Brittish has been outsourcing both of those job titles for years.

they did better because they didnt have management running their Union, Little came from management, his appointee Chris Oryano just went into management and who knows where Videtich will pop up?

Who was the first Union to introduce Part Time?

You also left out that even if the worst case scenario happened and the company dumped their pension in the PBGC that they would still be getting double of what we get, not even counting their Bplan, and the FA;s get a "contribution" while we only get a match.

 

[737823]

The IAM at UAL agreed to unlimited part-time and unlimited split shifts.

Josh

 

[Thomas Paine]

The IAM at UAL agreed to unlimited part-time and unlimited split shifts.Josh

That wasnt the question.

 

[NYer]

They cant be outsourced? Wrong, Brittish has been outsourcing both of those job titles for years.

they did better because they didnt have management running their Union, Little came from management, his appointee Chris Oryano just went into management and who knows where Videtich will pop up?

Who was the first Union to introduce Part Time?

You also left out that even if the worst case scenario happened and the company dumped their pension in the PBGC that they would still be getting double of what we get, not even counting their Bplan, and the FA;s get a "contribution" while we only get a match.

 
We're not British so the statement still stands and during this BK process, they didn't face the issue of being outsourced as the rest of us did.
 
In the worst case scenario if the Pensions were dumped onto the PBGC the pilots would lose their current accrued payout in exchange for a maximum of $57,477.24 per year. That is substantially less then what many have accrued, but it is enough to cover most-if not all-of the TWU and APFA Members accruals.
 
The flight attendants do receive an contribution on a sliding scale with the older flight attendants getting a larger percentage as opposed to the younger flight attendants and substantially more than a new hire flight attendant which is in the 2.5% range.

 

[Thomas Paine]

We're not British so the statement still stands and during this BK process, they didn't face the issue of being outsourced as the rest of us did.
 
In the worst case scenario if the Pensions were dumped onto the PBGC the pilots would lose their current accrued payout in exchange for a maximum of $57,477.24 per year. That is substantially less then what many have accrued, but it is enough to cover most-if not all-of the TWU and APFA Members accruals.
 
The flight attendants do receive an contribution on a sliding scale with the older flight attendants getting a larger percentage as opposed to the younger flight attendants and substantially more than a new hire flight attendant which is in the 2.5% range.

You made the statement that Pilots and Flight attendants cant be outsourced and that's why we ended up with such crappy deals. I gave an example where an airline did outsource those jobs, thus debunking your claim, if you are claiming that since we are not British that your statement still stands, well what does it stand on? Can you come up with a ruling or FAR or anything at all to back up your claim that those jobs can not be outsourced?

The pension, with a max rate of $57000 how many TWU members would have been effected had the company dumped the pension into the PBGC? How many FSCs or AMTs would have seen their pensions ever get above $57000 a year? If we had dumped the pension in the PBGC instead of freezing it wouldn't that have more than met the dollar figure for concessions from the TWU? So we gave additional concessions to freeze the pension instead of terminating it for what? What is the point you are trying to make? That we should be glad they froze it and extracted additional concessions to save the pilots pensions?

So for the pilots saving the plan from being dumped into the PBGC makes sense, but that also means that if anything they should have received an inferior 401K plan than we got since after all they were saving their accrued benefits from being cut by the PBGC. We gained nothing and ended up with an inferior 401k plan than the pilots.

Lets look at a mechanic with 45 years with the company and how termination would have affected his pension.
$65000 x .01677 x 44= $47962.20, nearly $10 below the cap.
How about a guy with 50 years
$65000 x .01677 x 49= $53412.45

I stand corrected, Al Blackman, who is well over eighty years old would see his pension cut,
$65000 x .01677 x 72= $78483.60

Very few see 45 years with the company, fewer see 50, and only one has ever seen 73.

So one Mechanic , and Zero FSCs would have been affected had AA dumped the pensions in the PBGC, and with over $10 billion in cash AA would have more than enough to fund their liabilities so other than Al Blackman, no other TWU member was helped by freezing vs terminating the pension.

Another thing you left out, in the end you agreed to both, outsourcing and concessions.

 

[FWAAA]

How was it that the APA and APFA were able to do better for their members in bankruptcy then the TWU? 
 
Plus when coming out of bankruptcy the APA and APFA did a lot better for their members then the TWU did. 
 
Please try and give realistic responses to a serious question. Lets try and stay away from another "TWU sucks" thread.

The APA and APFA have done better for their members for decades, and their performance wasn't diminished during Ch 11.
 
The TWU, on the other hand, has underperformed for its members for decades, and its performance during Ch 11 was no different than the many years prior.   
 
All workgroups took concessions equal to about 17% of their cost.   The pilots and FAs had compensation and benefits that were near the top of the industry while the TWU had compensation and benefits that were near the bottom of the industry.    When you start near the bottom, you'll come out of the process at or near the bottom.    The pilots and FAs, on the other hand, started from a much more advantageous position.   
 
As an aside, on the pilot 401k, many posters mix and match concepts when discussing the pilot retirement.
 
Before bankruptcy, the pilots had a huge defined benefit pension PLUS an 11% company-paid contribution to their B-plan.   
 
During bankruptcy, that huge defined benefit pension was frozen and in return, the pilots received a mere 3% bump in their defined contribution plan to make up for it.  
 
The pilots didn't get a 14% company-paid contribution in the bankruptcy;   the pilots kept their long-ago negotiated 11% and negotiated an additional 3% to compensate them for the frozen A-plan (for a total of 14%).    Parker then gave them 2% more in the merger MOU, for a total of 16%.   

 

[MetalMover]

Another thing you left out, in the end you agreed to both, outsourcing and concessions.

You do make some valid points about the Pilots and FA's CAN'T be outsourced.  But it just seems that airlines are willing to outsource GROUND workers and not flight crew where and when they can. I just don't think they WILL EVER be outsourced. 
One thing about Blackman's pension....He had to start collecting it at 70 years of age by law. 
So since he turned 70, he has been collecting everything.

 

[Thomas Paine]

So in others words no TWU member would have been harmed had they turned the pension over to the PBGC instead of freezing it. So why didn't the TWU simply let them terminate and use the value of that as meeting its entire obligation as far as concessions?

 

[bigjets]

The APA and APFA don't have to spend resources in order to prevent outsourcing such as the rest of us have to deal with.
.

So by your logic the TWU has failed miserably. Not only have we lost pay and benefits before and after BK, but what the TWU has been bragging about for the past decade, that we do ALL of our own maintenance is not true. Let's talk about the closing of AFW, MCI and other stations, so not only is the TWU not protecting jobs/work, we have the worst contract, a UNION that negotiated for .01$ shift diff, 1/2 pay for sick day, 5 holidays paid at x1.5 no double time after working 12 hours, and this was negotiated 10 years BEFORE bankruptcy.