Overspeed said:
Looking at UA/CO merger aligning contracts separately before negotiating an agreement that raises the bar is normal. Frustrating but normal. Neither UA or CO got a higher wage rate than the other before working on a JCBA. The bad thing is that UA has been negotiating with the IBT for over three years and they do not have union merger issues.
Did either of them go into the merger with an open contract?
No they didn't just open the contracts and give raises but for all three of those years both the CAL and the UAL agreements were far superior to either ours or the IAMs, they have higher pay, more holidays at higher multipliers and better benefits and workrules. look at us, our new employees only get one week of vacation and just lost the option to buy a second week, which even non-union Delta workers start off with, non union Jet Blue starts off with four weeks vacation. Don't you think that UAL is saying to their guys "how do you expect us to compete when AA is paying their guys $5 and hour less? Even after the mid term wage adjustment AA will still be paying wAAy less due to our inferior Vacation, Holidays, sick time, health benefits, OT rules etc etc.
I spoke to some guy named Jackson at the Shareholders meeting, I forget what his position was, he claims that they don't want to give the IAM a bigger pay raise than what we are getting because it would not be fair to the AA guys (like they care!!). I told him that they told us that when we became as big as the others that they would pay us like the others, we are looking at the IAM deal to see whether or not they intend to keep their word and would not mind one bit if they brought them up to industry standards because if we get hung up in joint negotiations our pay would be brought up as well through the mid term wage adjustment. (we don't want the IAM deal dragging down the average which this deal does). I also said that if they do that it would likely speed up the process as far as getting a joint deal done. (this was prior to the announcement of a TA).
This agreement is a disgrace, AA is already making tons of money and it doesn't even bring these guys close to what UAL and Delta are currently paying, it brings them up to our bottom of the industry Bankruptcy contract. One thing for sure, it makes the idea of any sort of "Alliance" with the IAM picking half of our negotiating team that much more repugnant.
If anything the UAL/CAL extended negotiations should give us a pretty clear view of what we can expect from our joint negotiations, and thats with just one Union at the table, not two, our joint negotiations could very well last up to the amendable date of our current CBA and roll back into section 6. Then we would be in the same position we are now but four years later, and older. Having both the legacy AA and (if it passes) the legacy US mechanics locked into the worst deals in the industry will render far more savings than any synergies gained through a joint agreement that brings us up to industry standard. Settling for a crappy deal now under the guise that we will then get a better deal in joint is nothing but pie in the sky. I hope the US guys arent stupid enough to buy it, tell the company to "show us what you intend to do when we are under one agreement". I think they already have.
The IAM needs to get a deal that brings them up to industry standard now, not up to the AA bankruptcy pay rates, that's pathetic. Doing so would put more pressure on management to come to a joint agreement fearing that maintaining the inequity through extended no-gotiations could destabilize the company.