New,
You need to understand the way it all happened. Once upon a time, we had the industry leading contract. Oh, those were the days! No furlough clause (almost laughable, now) reserves could pass trips. flying into days off was only during the most extreme inops, and basically people didn't even have to fly and got paid. That obviously couldn't continue, and once 911 happend the company had its excuse. Granted, we lost riduculous amounts of money after 911... more than any other carrier because DCA was our HQ and our most profitable airport... we operate 42% of DCA flights. When it was closed for three weeks, it was almost impossible to recover from that.
Getting back to the contract, even before 911 and after the United merger debacle, it was clear that our pres/CEO and chaiman of the board both needed to go. They spent almost two years paying no attention to the operations, only the merger which was doomed from the very beginning. During that period, our contract was negotiated and the company pretty much gave away the store rather than spend time negotiating when the figured they's all be gone after the merger anyway.
Well, they left and in walks "labor friendly" Siegel. His story was that he was going to try like hell to avoid bankruptcy by restructuring the entire company, every labor contract, aircraft mosaic, facilities, etc. It was a great song and dance, but I don't think he ever meant to avoid bankruptcy. He told the employees that if they come to the table and negotiate, we won't be asked to take deeper cuts in bankruptcy. This was concessions round number 1. The employees gave back millions and millions and million annually in reduced pay, benefits, and work rules. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract when we entered BK#1. Our supposed financial savior, one David Bronner who runs the Alabama public employees retirement system also said he knew it was important to be labor friendly, and the could not rebuild the company without the help of employees. During the bankruptcy period, Bronner told labor that they need more concessions. Labor resisted and so he put a gun to our heads and said "if you don't negotiate, we will seek abrogation of your contracts." Well, bankruptcy courts are not known to be fair to employees of a bankrupt company, so it's back to the negotiating table for the unions.
Oh, and by the way, leading the contractact negotiations all along the way was one known union busters, Jerry Glass. The man is absolutely ruthless and cares only about his checks and bonuses and probably gets a hard-on at the thought of ruining lives. Keep in mind, we have had many of our fellow employees lose houses, cars, and file bankruptcy. Some of them have even committed suicide. This is what US Airways employees have been through over the past four years. There have been untold numbers of unfair terminations.
So, back to concessions. All unions agree to concessions, we come out of bankruptcy, and everything is supposed to be hunky-dorey. Well, that didn't happen because the company spent the time between bankruptcies screwing employees rather than trying to run a profitable airline. We heard excuse after excues after excuse for their boneheaded decision which cost millions of dollars. They didn't budget money to clean aircraft, they understaffed ground ops to the extent that we had several huge baggage meltdowns (tens of thousands of bags not making flights over a single weekend) which cost millions of more dollars in claims paid, paying outside carriers to deliver them, etc. Well, they turn around and blame the baggage handlers and flight attendants, nationally, on television, saying that the flight attendants had a sick out. That was a downright lie, and as it turned out we were within three or four sick-calls from the same holiday weekend the year before. They never did apoligize to us, even after the FAA gave a scathing report about the incident, having failed to plan and then blaming employees. I can sit here all weekend and think of more boneheaded dicisions they made... get rid of pretzels, get rid of glassware. Before 911 we had a product that was the envy of the industry, and once these guys came onto the property, our product was pathetic.. filthy aircraft, shredded seat upholstry, a/c not properly provisions, etc, etc.,etc.
So, back to the bankruptcy courtroom we go and, of course, we were once again told that if we didn't submit to their will, our already bastardized contracts would be abrogated. So, round #3 begins. And believe it or not, our flight attendant contract fared pretty well compared to the other work groups because Teddy Xidas led a CHAOS strike threat. Before then, the company kept raising their demands on us, postponed negotiations, etc. They very much had a "make them sweat" attitude. Once the CHAOS strike concept was ratified, the company finally began negotiating in good faith.
So that's the past four years at US Airways, in a nutshell. But don't even get me started on the MidAtlantic situation.
Regards,
DCAflyer