Mach85ER said:
FWAAA,
Dunno.
The BK from our end looks more and more like a BK of conveniance.
Pay and bennies is another thing. Their narrow body pay goes from the low $120's to around $180 hour. Work rules are another story.
I have no idea what list they will use. I will describe current events from that group as,....well.............."charming".
No argument here. From November 29, 2011, it was clear that the board had finally exhausted its patience with Arpey and his "bankruptcy is what failures do and we prefer to wait for the other airlines to be overly generous with their new contracts" strategy. Instead, the board ordered him to cram new contracts down the throats of, primarily, the pilots and the flight attendants. AA wanted to outsource 79-82 seat large RJs (finally agreed on the new industry-standard 76 seats). From the pilots and the FAs, AA wanted to sweep away some of the "work rules" that management said were inefficient.
AA wasn't broke and its business model wasn't broken as UA and DL had both merged and were showing promise of improvements with the same business model AA was using. They had just become bigger than AA. AA had amassed enough cash from various loans that it did not need to beg banks for debtor-in-possession financing.
Of course, bankruptcy law requires that all work groups give up equal percentages and thus, the fleet service and mechanics (who were already poorly paid) had to give up the same 17% of their labor costs.
Claxon said:
True, but not the Nic list part.
The west pilots are going to push hard on the bankruptcy of AA. They fully expect a shot at the bigger equipment right off the bat.
If the SLI is handed to an arbitration panel, I don't see them trying to combine AA, US East and US West (America West). Instead, I see them taking a shortcut and dusting off Nicolau's already-prepared list from 2007. Nor do I see an arbitration panel starting from scratch and re-doing the US East and West integration all over again. It's already done.
Al Legheny said:
I have heard that argument before....I looked for some information on that and found a credible source in the form of expert testimony in the case of Brady v. ALPA. I believe it was testimony in the penalty phase of the TWA v. ALPA damages trial. The testimony is from Richard. A Kasher, Esquire - A well known labor arbitrator.
<snip>
The AWA / US Aribitration was based on a PID (Policy Initiation Date) of May19, 2005. It is based on an entirely different set of facts from those that are now present. It is likely that if APA / and USAPA in arbitration the former PID will be a decade old. It is highly unlikely that an arbitrator will simply use the snapshot that formed the basis for the AWA / US merger. This merger represents an entirely new set of facts.
You may be right, but I don't read those decisions as requiring that the 2007 list be ignored. It was a snapshot, as you say, of the US pilots as of the merger.
I'm not saying that the APA list and the NIC list will be combined just like the NIC list was created, only that they won't waste time and energy re-doing what Nicolau did in the last arbitration. The facts and circumstances of this merger (AA and US) are different from the facts and circumstances of the last merger (US and HP). The fact that a bunch of pilots tried to run away from an arbitration result with which they disagreed won't cause arbitrators to now ignore the existence of that list.
Al Legheny said:
You may make that argument....but the experts don't seem to agree.
<snip>
The honorable Judge Silver noted this in her commentary on Addington III. She only considered the position of the parties Prospectively. That is going forward. In her decision she noted that this was not the same prior merger or condition but a new merger with a new specific set of facts.
Like I said - you may be right, but Judge Silver has no authority when it comes to SLI arbitration of the APA and USAPA pilots. The Federal Arbitration Act declares arbitration off-limits to judicial interference. Until over-ruled by higher courts, the Judge's opinions control the damages suit between the US East and US West pilot groups - nobody's disputing that.
I merely predict that the APA list and the NIC list will be combined in a new arbitration later this year or next year. And nobody's going to be particularly happy with the result, except perhaps the America West (US West) pilots.
