Jim, you and I are in that 2,500 pool of fas subject to furlough if the Term sheet passes as is. I figure I wouldn't be around to sample any of it. If we are furloughing 500 at a time, I'd be gone by fall. Kinda ironic to be bidding for vacation tomorrow when I probably wouldn't be around to enjoy it. I like the Delta style reserve system being proposed. If they get rid of language speakers, fine with me. I'll just go back to LGA/JFK. The union doesn't care about us and AA is not interested in staffing speakers like the major international carriers do. I recently non-reved on an international carrier and they had 2 speakers. On a recent AA China flight, the purser ended up asking a passenger to make chinese announcements due to a critical situation on board. I find that disgraceful but nothing will be done until the foreign country the airline flies into insists on having native speakers on board.
Flight Attendant Term Sheet
- Thread starter jimntx
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kirkpatrick
Veteran
There's a lot of details missing in the term sheet and I think the company and the union should get those details out to the membership as quickly as possible. On the override, the problem is it only applies to hours flown. I assume it applies to credit hours, but I've learned not to assume too much. So if you're off sick or on vacation your hours are paid at domestic rates, but if you fly an international trip you get the 3 bucks tacked on, similar to the way purser override or galley pay is paid today. Again, I assume what the company is trying to do with the references to over water is make it clear that what's now domestic remains domestic, and what's now international remains international.
They'll try to convince us that the override is the only way to manage a system with cross-utilization, but that's not so. At my previous airline, at the end of the month they figured out the percentage of each operation flown and adjusted hourly and OT rates to fall where they should. For example, someone at top of scale who flew 60% international and 40% domestic would be paid $47.88 per hour, 60% of the way between $46.00 and $49.14, the current dom and int rates. Same for overtime until we lost it later. Just to point out it can be done.
MK
kirkpatrick
Veteran
It doesn't have to. See my previous post.
Do you really think they care about that?
MK
jimntx
Veteran
Is Quebec, Canada the only destination that requires speakers? I thought most foreign countries required a speaker of local language. Learn something every day.
But, you are right. International flights should not leave the ground without at least one speaker of the destination country language. We have enough difficulty on domestic flights with passengers who do not speak English.
For a Purser to have to ask a passenger to do PAs??? That's even more world-class airline than the window-shade repair I saw on a 737 that had overnighted at MCO. There were 3 Safety Instruction cards stuck to the window by about 10 Inop cart stickers.
But, you are right. International flights should not leave the ground without at least one speaker of the destination country language. We have enough difficulty on domestic flights with passengers who do not speak English.
For a Purser to have to ask a passenger to do PAs??? That's even more world-class airline than the window-shade repair I saw on a 737 that had overnighted at MCO. There were 3 Safety Instruction cards stuck to the window by about 10 Inop cart stickers.
kirkpatrick
Veteran
At my previous airline changing trip rig from one for 3.5 to one for 4 changed a five-day JFK-CDG-TLV-CDG-JFK trip from 27 hrs to 22 hrs, bringing an 81 hr month (for 3 trips) to 66, meaning a whole extra trip had to be added. This can be devastating.
MK
jimntx
Veteran
Two points...I think I answered my own question last night. The company wants to eliminate duty rigs; so, there won't be any pay and credit.
Also, vacation will be paid at a flat 3 hours/day, but you will be paid for all accrued vacation days (unlike today where we get paid only for vacation days where we would have flown). As far as vacation pay, Pref Bidding does not allow you to bid into a conflict. There will be no trips on your schedule during a vacation period; so, pay for the trip will not be an issue.
A whole set of threads could be devoted to the "new" sick leave policy and procedure--not the least being that if you and/or your doctor are not willing to submit his/her diagnosis/and treatment plan to the "managed care review," your sick leave will be unpaid. Even if paid, only the 24 days or first two occurrences will be paid full for trips missed. Everything beyond that will be paid at 60%. I have a close friend who is currently on intermittent FMLA due to ongoing chronic health issues. How is that going to be affected by the new regime?
From what I can understand, even if your doctor submits the info, the review folks can disagree with your doctor. Your time off is then unpaid. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I don't think this is all bad. I know of at least 2 flight attendants who think that sick leave is really supplemental vacation time. One actually said to me, "I earned that sick leave. It's my right to use it anyway I want."
As she is a friend of mine, I tried to warn her that the courts have ruled more than once that a company may establish a policy that using sick leave when you are not sick is grounds for termination. (We had an employee at Texaco who thought like her. He tried to sue Texaco when they fired him for abuse of sick leave. The courts dismissed the suit out of hand on previously established precedent.) Her response..."I'm not worried. My doctor will put anything on those FMLA papers I tell him to."
(Before anyone wants to disagree with me, there is no law (well maybe in California) that requires an employer to provide you with paid sick leave. It is a true company benefit (offered due to the efforts of unions of days past who won it in contracts, and the employer had to offer it to non-union employees as well to prevent riots.
) The FMLA requires only that a covered employer must give an employee up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off per year for personal/family illness before they can terminate you for absenteeism. You can not go by the implementation for f/as at AA. The way AA has implemented it, they are burning your sick leave and your FMLA at the same time if you don't want it to be "chargeable." I was at Texaco when the law was passed. Texaco's interpretation of the law was that you had to use up all accrued sick leave, vacation, and compensatory time before the FMLA clock started ticking.)kirkpatrick
Veteran
Barriers like the five day week and the eight hour day? I know we're going to have to take some knocks but let's be careful about calling limitations "barriers".
I think the senior people will always get what they want no matter what the rules, and I have no problem with that. I'd like to see the system flexible enough to allow those who want domestic to be able to fly domestic, and those who want international to be able to fly international. It can be done while still giving the company its flexibility.
If it ain't broke don't fix it.
They haven't made any offers yet. If they allow people to retire under the "old rules" with insurance they might get quite a few. Eight years ago UA did that and about 2500 FAs bailed out. If they offer some cash they could increase that number.
It would be in their interest to do so. The hourly rate for newhires is less than half that at top of scale, and there are other benefits as well. I went fifteen years without seeing a doctor except for routine eye exams and my flight physical for my pilot's license every two years. Young people seldom use medical benefits. Matching 5.5% of 401k contributions helps too, since 5.5% of a lower pay means less payout from the company, and many/most young people don't save for retirement anyway, since they think it will never happen.
MK
kirkpatrick
Veteran
This is one thing I hope the company is able to get. Pref bidding would be wonderful. I know I'm practically alone in this opinion, but I took part in a test program at my previous airline among pursers, so I know a bit about how it works. You'll be able to get your line pretty much where you want it initially, eliminating the need to pay traders to back things up and drop turns which they throw into good lines.
I agree. They need to get a lot of info out quickly. If they're smart they could fix a lot of problems without costing money. For example, the current system of not being able to touch open time the day before originated with the idea of saving open trips for AVBL people, but that won't be necessary any longer. The AM/PM call in periods are a good idea, but don't have to be limited to a few senior reserves. I'd be glad to lend the negotiators my old T** contract so they could see how to make it work right.
One of the reasons we had such great flexibility at my old company was that there was a spirit of working together to save the company, and the company gave in on a lot of little things that cost little or no money, and in exchange we were willing to give them some of what they wanted. I wonder why that's too much to expect here.
MK
jimntx
Veteran
Be careful what you wish for. There is a distinct difference between "we will need less flight attendants on reserve" and "we will need less flight attendants with the new reserve system." The combination of the reserve pools into one is why the company wants to permanently eliminate 2300 f/a positions. However, that does not mean you or anyone else currently subject to reserve will be off reserve in the new system.
IIRC, I read somewhere that at Delta (whose reserve system we seem to be offered in the term sheet) only the top 10% of f/as in seniority have no reserve days on their schedules each month. So, the new system may simply mean that instead of serving reserve for a full month 3 times/year, you will now have some reserve days every month.
There is a possibility that with 2800 f/as (counting the 500 who have already been sent WARN letters) off the active list, the seniority of people subject to reserve may actually go lower than it is now, and people that are currently free of reserve may be back on reserve.
As you said, there are a lot of questions with no answers in the term sheet. I would doubt that you could trade reserve days (can you imagine AA allowing something that f/a-friendly? Please!). They just can not wrap their little brains around a concept like is used at Southwest where the schedulers don't care who flies a trip as long as somebody flies the trip. Who cares whose on reserve that day as long as somebody is on reserve. The company should care less about it, but they don't.
It would be nice if they allowed self-plotting on the reserve days, but there would have to be restrictions to make sure they have speaker/purser/etc coverage for all days. And, they would have to prevent plotting turns in the middle of a block of reserve days to make yourself ineligible for anything other than turns on the rest of the days. (Yes, we all know it would happen today if it could. There's a reason the company put restrictions on plotting turns for available days.
)
jersey777
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I would like to be able to join in this conversation because I am full of opinions. However, the term sheet is so extreme, so drastic and so all encompassing that I don't know where to begin. There will be no time for the union the survey us as to what means the most to us that I feel like I just have to sit back and have faith that the apfa will do its best to mitigate this gauntlet thrown at us by the company. We are in the hands of the union and ultimately the judge as to what our future holds because it is apparent that American airlines does not care a red cent about its employees and they are using the us bankruptcy laws to get everything they want in one day that has taken over 30 years to negotiate. IF there was a different mentality of our management team then a contract could have been agreed upon years ago. The apfa was willing to make concessions on hours flown, pensions, and medical but all that is being forgotten because American airlines decided to go for the jugular. I am sickened and disgusted and need a break. Oh and by the way, I flew in from Europe yesterday and I smiled and was pleasant to all our paying passengers because although American airlines doesn't appreciate me, I do it for myself and even at 46 like to think I make my parents proud.
Where did you come up with 2500?
When i first read the 'term sheet' the first thing that ran through my mind was that a good many of these positions have been sitting on a shelf somewhere in center port for decades. Talk about an AA pipe dream. Now before anyone rants on about how the company can get whatever it wants and that everything they want is reasonable given the state of the industry .. have a look at UA's "term sheet", the same legal document A.P.F.A. received from AA, and compare that to their final outcome through bargaining..HERE.
There is a world of difference between what they initially asked for and were then able to get through the bargining process. There are so many issues with this term sheet it's hard to know where to start but my first read gets my blood boiling at
1) The 85-95+ scheduling max..this issue came up last spring in negotiations, so i learned from many emails, and the real problem with this is from the AA side. They were not then willing to dictate what percentage of bid lines would be built to the skd max. And A.P.F.A. responded by way of explanation that if the company got this they then could only build 10-15% of the bid lines to the skd max if they so chose. And here's the kicker...every other bid line would have available days to bring the time up to the max. So yes, the increased hours would placate many of us who must work overtime, the downside is almost everyone would have available days to accommodate that. Now if the company was willing to go to 75-80% bid lines built to the max, then that's another issue.
2)Preferential bidding and vc. By asking for both of these the company can eliminate in one shot 2 very large issues for most of us, i.e. stretching vacation time and seniority bidding. With PB you can say goodbye to any extra VC days we may have been able to achieve in the past as the bid lines would never allow that. In combination with that, the pay cut alone on a 3hr VC day pay rate is enormous. And with PB there is no way, that I know of, to verify or even quantify seniority. There is no 'master' bid sheet to refer to when an f/a claims seniority violation in the award process.
3) The sick time issue is beyond the pale. Really? If i get sick and exhaust my sick time the company can terminate my employment with them after 3 years if i can't return to flying? Who the hell even thought of this as a good idea?
4) No duty rigs...HUH? We're just going to say goodbye to more than 30 years of work rules..ALL of them?
It just seems to me that on balance what the company realizes is that for the very first time they will NOT have the final say in agreeing to a contract, that in some way the judge will run things down the middle if it indeed gets to that point. Knowing this ahead of time their first offer, and I use that word very loosely, has to be a rock bottom pipe dream so that any bargaining will bring all issues up in terms of pay and benefits.
And Jim as to your question on the International pay override I have not a clue as to what theta last sentence means. Like almost everything else in this 'term sheet' it is extremely vague and overly broad.
There is a world of difference between what they initially asked for and were then able to get through the bargining process. There are so many issues with this term sheet it's hard to know where to start but my first read gets my blood boiling at
1) The 85-95+ scheduling max..this issue came up last spring in negotiations, so i learned from many emails, and the real problem with this is from the AA side. They were not then willing to dictate what percentage of bid lines would be built to the skd max. And A.P.F.A. responded by way of explanation that if the company got this they then could only build 10-15% of the bid lines to the skd max if they so chose. And here's the kicker...every other bid line would have available days to bring the time up to the max. So yes, the increased hours would placate many of us who must work overtime, the downside is almost everyone would have available days to accommodate that. Now if the company was willing to go to 75-80% bid lines built to the max, then that's another issue.
2)Preferential bidding and vc. By asking for both of these the company can eliminate in one shot 2 very large issues for most of us, i.e. stretching vacation time and seniority bidding. With PB you can say goodbye to any extra VC days we may have been able to achieve in the past as the bid lines would never allow that. In combination with that, the pay cut alone on a 3hr VC day pay rate is enormous. And with PB there is no way, that I know of, to verify or even quantify seniority. There is no 'master' bid sheet to refer to when an f/a claims seniority violation in the award process.
3) The sick time issue is beyond the pale. Really? If i get sick and exhaust my sick time the company can terminate my employment with them after 3 years if i can't return to flying? Who the hell even thought of this as a good idea?
4) No duty rigs...HUH? We're just going to say goodbye to more than 30 years of work rules..ALL of them?
It just seems to me that on balance what the company realizes is that for the very first time they will NOT have the final say in agreeing to a contract, that in some way the judge will run things down the middle if it indeed gets to that point. Knowing this ahead of time their first offer, and I use that word very loosely, has to be a rock bottom pipe dream so that any bargaining will bring all issues up in terms of pay and benefits.
And Jim as to your question on the International pay override I have not a clue as to what theta last sentence means. Like almost everything else in this 'term sheet' it is extremely vague and overly broad.
butchord45
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First off I am waiting for an apology from my elected negotiators........yeah I know you have to play hardball....and try to get all you can......but at some point you need to be able to see the writing on the wall and cut your losses........they didn't!!!!
Now instead of having a zero sum contract....we have a loss on every single line item......and we have absolutely ZERO leverage......hold on to the Golden goose of the pension all these years when you could have negotiated it away and got a lot for it.......but no.....now we will give it away for free....and have pretty much no say in it....
Still pissed....still not ready to vote for either one of them because they both have dirt on their hands over this......I will calm down....but not yet!!!!!!
Butch.....steaming in ORD!!!
Now instead of having a zero sum contract....we have a loss on every single line item......and we have absolutely ZERO leverage......hold on to the Golden goose of the pension all these years when you could have negotiated it away and got a lot for it.......but no.....now we will give it away for free....and have pretty much no say in it....
Still pissed....still not ready to vote for either one of them because they both have dirt on their hands over this......I will calm down....but not yet!!!!!!
Butch.....steaming in ORD!!!
WorldTraveler
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thanks, Kirkpatrick. I was using the term "barriers" to mean advantages that labor has gained and as has been noted labor has lost on every category.
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My question regarding the language program comes from comments that were made in the past about layoffs while at the same time the company could retain the LAX language speakers. My question was whether the company is attempting to gain any leverage in how language speakers are ranked or protected.
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AA's labor unions do need to fight and although the company does have enormous leverage it isn't a given that all that labor has gained over the years must be given up in order for AA to successfully emerge.
All the best to all of you.
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My question regarding the language program comes from comments that were made in the past about layoffs while at the same time the company could retain the LAX language speakers. My question was whether the company is attempting to gain any leverage in how language speakers are ranked or protected.
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AA's labor unions do need to fight and although the company does have enormous leverage it isn't a given that all that labor has gained over the years must be given up in order for AA to successfully emerge.
All the best to all of you.
jimntx
Veteran
You have it slightly backward. The company can not retain the LAX Mandarin speakers if there are furloughs. A Letter of Agreement with the union permitted the company to hire 20 (iirc) Mandarin speakers out of seniority order so that they could begin the LAX to China service. These speakers are below the most junior f/a still on furlough in seniority. The LOA stipulates that in case of additional furloughs (coming to an airline near you 01APR), these speakers are the first to go, and will fall on the recall list below the most junior person currently on it. They may not be recalled out of order.
If there are furloughs, the company will either have to force transfer speakers from other bases (which I'm not sure they can do), offer extra bennies for TDY assignments in LAX, fly the China service with no speakers (perish the thought), or suspend the China service (which may result in them losing the landing rights for this route). None of the options is particularly attractive, but, oh well.
One other option for the company would be to rehire the speakers as just speakers. They would fly the trips, do PAs and translate as needed, have no flight attendant duties, and would occupy a passenger seat for takeoff and landing. In this case, I think any who did this would lose their flight attendant standing and could not be recalled as a flight attendant. (But, I don't know that for sure.)
It just occurred to me that the LAX speakers probably got their WARN letters this week. (Or, should have. I'm not sure we can trust the company to do anything above board right now.)
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