The following post from an AA thread references the post-retirement employment requirement for approval by the IAMNPF when a retiree has a need to seek additional income. I believe this opinion would pretty much sum up what the majority feels about being forced into the IAMNPF at LAA and would hope LUS folks put some thought towards this. Bob Owens is presently the Treasurer of Aircraft Maintenance Line Local591:
"We don't want to end up in the IAMNPF. Basically what this comes down to is we have to surrender our A&P license to the IAMNPF if we want to collect a Pension that on average currently pays retirees and beneficiaries around $5000 per year.
Sorry by No Thanks.
Several years ago there was an FAA proposal where the FAA would allow carriers to issue non-portable certificates that would be the equal of an A&P license. That plan was shelved. This policy essentially acts the same way. While our Licenses remain portable it imposes a financial penalty if we decide we have had enough of bottom of the industry pay, benefits and work rules and decide to take what we have earned and go elsewhere with our licenses. It removes bargaining leverage as far as ever making things better. I doubt it would be legal for an employer to implement such a restriction so now we have a Union sponsored plan doing their dirty work for them.
The IAM did not get me my tickets and I do not plan on surrendering my ability to use them to their plan either, you shouldn't either.
I think I know their BS explanation for having this policy, they want people who are retired out of the industry to shrink the labor pool available which in theory would help them negotiate better contracts. However the effect of this policy has negligible effect as far as driving the market rate up, in fact it has done the opposite, just looking at the last IAM mechanics agreement proves that.. The real reasons are that they want workers to pay into the plan as long as possible and collect from the plan as few years as possible, this is great for the plan, not so good for members, because that effect also produces a huge benefit for the company. It creates a captive work force that they can abuse the crap out of, and they have, thats why we see US with the oldest mechanics group in the industry. One would expect, since they claim they did such a good job at saving jobs that they would have one of the youngest, but they don't, their mechanic group is older than the AA group. This policy of creating a captive elderly group of mechanics is probably the greatest contributing factor in the passing of the recent concessionary agreement the IAM signed with the very profitable AA. A younger group of mechanics, or mechanics who possessed a great measure of portability and mobility would never have ratified such a poor agreement. Now they want us all to end up in the same place as a group of people who ratified a concessionary deal with a very profitable carrier.
Now I have no doubt that the IAM will contest my claim that the deal they signed was concessionary, but even though there were gains the fact is the deal, which was the second deal they negotiated, eight years after exiting Bankruptcy, was inferior to what Delta, and United have, and nowhere near what SWA , Fed-Ex or UPS. The deal is still concessionary compared to what they had in 2002 while the profits of the company have soared. The profits are so high that it would take less than one quarters profits to fully restore the compensation of every worker on the property. In other words our concessions did not make them profitable, they didn't need them, our concessions made them extremely profitable."