Well, since nobody has actually responded to my post - other than to mock or grandstand - I would be interested to hear what strategy AA should have followed. What should the plan have been?
What should AA have done? Cut, cut, cut but kept wages and benifits as they were. Those who were laid off would have had a good job to come back to. We would have seen more guys retire. Their dependability would be up there with SWA and more than likely their profits would as well. They would have had a motivated workforce instead of a demoralized defeated one.
Delta makes more than we do, United Mechanics just rejected a TA that was better than the one we rejected, those are the only two surviving legacy carriers, NWA was bought by Delta and CAL was bought by UAL. The UAL contract was a carbon copy of the CAL agreement that pushed through by workers in Houston who apparently were looking for some merger protection language. Jet Blue tops out at $40/hr, we top out over $6/hr less. We wont go into SWA or UPS but the fact is that their structure never changed and at best they kept pace with inflation.
The arguement always falls back to OH, and leaves out the fact that AA always enjoyed a labor cost advantage over their competitors. Well the company has never stated that doing OH in house, with OSMs and other low cost Title 1 workers was more costly than outsourcing, and their behaviour over the last six years would indicate that it was not.
In a way I can sympathize with Jim Reams dilemma, he gets very good quality out of the bases but even well overhauled planes break down, thats why pretty much every carrier has line maintenance, but with a severely demoralized Line Maint worforce, where they can look across the ramp (UPS is just opposite AA's Hangar 10 in JFK) and see guys doing the same exact job but making a lot more money, he cant capitalize on it. He has finance and HR running negotiations blocking him from making any meaningful changes. One example is Geo pay, acceptable to the bases, who are the majority, and essentail if he expects to get better performance out of his cornerstone Line maint hubs like LAX, MIA and NYC. The motives of the outsiders seem to beare driven more by their own egos than by business sense, but then again who ever heard of HR running a business? They claim they dont want to set a precedence but they already have through flex rates and the fact that they pay their mechanics in Europe in excess of $45/hr. In return they make a lot of money off those guys, Europe brings in more 3P revenue per worker than the Domestic operation. In fact the company wants to increase staffing and send more work over there despite the fact that they pay them around $12/hr more and have to give them up to six times as much paid time off than their US counterparts. So the fact is the company already has GEO pay, they just refuse to give it to us, and in return, despite the best Overhauled planes in the industry they get to sit at the bottom and watch their ETOPs trips go over to the hangar instead of over to Europe, Asia or South America.
I see where some are saying that now that the 7 day labor loan, and 1/7th rule is off the table that Tulsa may be willing to throw us all under the bus. The arguement doesnt make sense because I would think they need the money and want more vacation as well. I hope that the doomsday guys are wrong and Tulsa does stand strong but either way I dont play by rules that are stacked against me if I can avoid it, if we dont get what we need, ratified be damned, AA sure isnt going to get what they need out of us. I wont go back to my peers and say "We need to put this in our rear view mirrors and do what is best for AA". I will preach that we should follow the lead that the company has set, "give as little as you can get away with and take whatever you can. AA will stay at or near the bottom. Like I've said, we can afford to be let down again.
