Spindoc, How do you like your crow?
IAM Members Protest US Airways' Management Tactics
Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) today are conducting informational picketing at four US Airways airport terminals to protest the airline's treatment of its employees and passengers. Informational picketing is occurring in Boston, MA; Pittsburgh, PA; Philadelphia, PA; and Charlotte, NC. IAM members are asking US Airways customers to contact the airline's CEO, David Siegel, and urge him to focus on building the airline rather than forcing employees and loyal customers to pay for his mismanagement.
"The IAM has identified ways US Airways could save $80-100 million annually within the framework of our current collective bargaining agreements," said IAM General Vice President Robert Roach, Jr. "There is no logical reason why the airline would rather pick our members' pockets instead of their brains."
US Airways has violated its contract with the IAM by subcontracting maintenance of aircraft, blamed employee unions for management's failure to produce an effective business plan and threatened to sell off some of the carrier's most profitable assets, including its east coast shuttle operation, if employees don't agree to amend their labor contracts.
"US Airways' passengers, employees and shareholders deserve true leadership," said IAM District 141 President Randy Canale. "Management has failed miserably in generating a successful business plan that would unify employees and provide the superior product US Airways' customers expect and deserve."
"The airline is in crisis, and management is attacking employees to divert attention from their inability to run the airline," said IAM District 141-M President Scotty Ford. "A company that doesn't recognize that employees are their most important asset is headed for disaster."
February 26, 2004
US AIRWAYS IAM MEMBERS OF DISTRICT LODGE 141-M
Today Thursday February 26th, I read with interest CEO David Siegel’s comments to Aviation Daily.
Siegel is quoted “making good progress†with the carrier’s labor groups.
Siegel is also quoted that he believes management is entering a “constructive phase†in its labor talks after both sides “vented†frustrations.
I am confused. Siegel would have us believe that talks have been on going with all the labor groups on US Airways. Once again, Dave has it wrong. There have been NO meetings with the IAM concerning further concessions.
Siegel also said, “we have no choice but to rally togetherâ€. I assume he means that the employees should rally around the flag to once again reach into our pockets and pay for his mismanagement of our past generosity.
I guess he is suggesting that there is some spirit of cooperation within the employee groups and we are all eager to make further concessions to help him further mismanage US Airways.
Do I have to remind you how David choose to spend many of the dollars that we contributed to his management team in order for the carrier to exit bankruptcy? I probably don’t but I will any way. He has spent money for attorneys in an attempt to violate our contract by farming out Airbus heavy maintenance. Remember, these are attorneys paid for by our own dollars.
That fight continues to this day.
His management team has spurned every suggestion from the IAM on ways the carrier can improve operations and methods on every day procedures that would save millions of dollars a year. You workers know exactly what I am talking about.
I guess a word about labor relations should also be addressed. You would think that a company that’s very survival hinges on it’s employees moral might work a little harder to earn the goodwill of it’s employees. Instead simple grievances are being denied continually and District 141-M is forced to arbitration, which is costly, frustrating and time consuming. Is this any way to win friends and influence people? I think not.
I don’t know what the other US Airways labor groups are doing but I do know that if David Siegel expects meaningful discussions with District 141-M of the IAM, then he and his team better start showing a change of attitude or he may find himself the awkward teenager at the school dance going home disappointed and lonely.
Sincerely and fraternally,
Scotty Ford
President/Directing General Chairman
February 23, 2003
Response from Randy Canale to Doug McKeen
Doug McKeen
Vice President Labor Relations
US Airways
2345 Crystal Dr.
Arlington, VA. 22227
Dear Mr. McKeen:
This is in response to your e-mail request to meet with District Lodge 141 on Thursday, February 26, 2004 at USA Headquarters, and our telephone discussion of February 20, 2004.
We have declined to respond to the Company’s directive (I use their term because the date and time were arbitrarily established by the Company and not by mutual agreement) as we can see no purpose being served.
We do not share the root cause of the Company’s continued struggles, and it has been made abundantly clear by the Officers of the Company you do not share our views. Our members have made a huge investment in their Airline, both in sweat equity and wage investments, ($240 million per year, for six years by the IAM).
We have seen our efforts/investments squandered by poor management of the Carrier. Starting at the top with CEO Seigel and working its way down to the front line supervisors.
District 141 on a number of occasions has initiated meetings with Corporate Officers, Management and a member of the Board of Directors (not the IAM member of the Board.) We have also held joint meetings with District 141-M of the IAM and Corporate Management. The purpose of those meetings was to provide the Company with millions of dollars in savings just by improvements in the operation of the Airline. These meetings have been to no avail with the Company. No interest was expressed by the Company and the response has been to declare war on the very heart of the “franchiseâ€, its employees.
Our members have seen their once proud Airline run into the ground (operationally and Customer service wise) by a total inept level of management, not seen since People’s Express/Eastern Airlines and we know what happened to those Airlines. This is only underscored by an example experienced by our members in Philadelphia. USA passengers chanting, Southwest! Southwest! Southwest!, as they wait and wait for their bags to arrive, due in no way to Fleet Service, I might add. If staffing levels were appropriate, these types of problems would not exist.
Our members are frustrated by poor management of the airline operation, disillusioned/ dismayed by a management that doesn’t respond to real help and savings, angered by a waste of their money and being targeted as the problem.
You can whine about low-cost competition, but Southwest is the most union organized domestic airline (including the highest wages), but what you refuse to see or acknowledge is a superior management and operation, achieved with their employees.
This management has been given the tools and opportunity, and has failed miserably, and ignores/refuses help from its own employees.
We have no intention of giving this Management anymore than valuable advice. With the current Corporate Officers, our members could pay to work at the carrier, and this Management would find a way to lose.
We could turn this “franchise†around, both in profitability and operationally if there was a sincere effort to commit together.
When there is a management in place to do so, we will be first in line to make it happen.
Sincerely,
S.R. (Randy) Canale
President & Directing General Chairperson
District 141
Union cancels meeting with US Airways on concessions
By: Karen Ferrick-Roman - Times Staff 02/27/2004
Thursday was when representatives from the mechanics union at US Airways were to hear about the airline's new business plan - and get a clue what concessions the airline might seek.
But Thursday's meeting between the International Association of Machinists and Related Aerospace Workers and US Airways didn't happen.
The union canceled, said David Castelveter, company spokesman.
True, said Bill Freiberger, who handles negotiations as general chairman of the IAM's District 141-M.
And, he said, the union has no plans to meet with the company until the airline is as willing to listen as it is to talk.
Freiberger said that two weeks ago, he passed along cost-saving proposals that could save US Airways $500,000 a year when he met with two airline executives in Philadelphia.
"If the IAM has suggestions on ways to save money and cut costs, we're more than willing to hear them," Castelveter said. "Not only to hear them, to discuss them thoroughly. In addition, we want to provide the IAM's leadership with information about the company's business plan, as we have done with the other unions, with the pilots and the flight attendants, but the IAM refused to attend the meeting."
Freiberger said that he took some of the proposals to the airline last May "and they haven't taken any type of response on it."
He contended the reason is because the proposed savings involve doing Airbus work in-house instead of using outside contractors.
The proposals have nothing to do with another battle over whether in-house mechanics or outside contractors in Mobile, Ala., provide heavy maintenance on the Airbus fleet, Freiberger said. That issue remains alive in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia. The last ruling went the company's way and reduced the dispute to a grievance procedure; the mechanics are petitioning the entire appeals court to decide the case.
Freiberger said the cost-savings proposals instead deal with repairing flight controls, ceiling panels, emergency power supplies and avionics equipment.
Routine Airbus maintenance is done internally, Castelveter said, and outsourced only if a plane needs repairs while at an airport without a US Airways maintenance base.
But the union has a different outlook.
"They're hell-bent on not utilizing existing mechanics, as well as bringing laid-off ones back to work," Freiberger said.
"Until they're willing to meet with us on what we suggested to them, why would we do anything else?"
Meanwhile, a meeting Thursday between the Association of Flight Attendants and David Bronner, chairman of the board for the US Airways Group, was canceled. A spokeswoman from the Retirement Systems of Alabama, which Bronner also chairs, said the meeting had been postponed and no other date set.
Bronner needed to travel through Charlotte, N.C., which had been socked with 10 inches of snow, Castelveter said.
After meeting with Bronner last week, Air Line Pilots Association representatives decided to reopen negotiations with US Airways.
An arbitrator decided Tuesday that six US Airways pilots were improperly laid off.
Individual pilots have not yet been identified, said Jack Stephan, spokesman for US Airways' pilots union.
The pilots were laid off between February and June 2003, according to an update posted on the union Web site.
The union was aware that positions would be eliminated, but Stephan said, "The company was supposed to get to that point through attrition."
The airline will work with the union to decide pay and other terms for the pilots to be recalled, said David Castelveter, US Airways spokesman.
Karen Ferrick-Roman can be reached online at kroman@timesonline.com.
I believe that refutes what you have posted.
