Bob, I don't quite see how AA continuing to lose market share and revenue to lower cost providers is a one sided victory for management... It threatens their very reason for existance.
In -every- line of business, there is going to be a competitor who finds a way to win over your customers thru either service or lower price. More often than not, it's price that wins.
This has happened in retail (entirely non-union, by the way), auto manufacturing (heavily union), electronics, and manufacturing (moderately unionized), and airlines (moderately unionized when you consider that 25% of AA, 85% of DL, and most of the LCC's are non-union).
Well there are still Macys out there, and Mercedes. Porhses, Hiummers and other products that continue to sell despite the fact that they have to compete with Walmart, Hyundia etc. The fact is we have heard about how AA is losing market share and revenue for the last twenty years, funny thing is despite all those years of losing market share AA is bigger than ever!! Spread your BS somewhere else.
It's also not a new phenomena in the airlines... In the 1980's, you had People Express, Midway, Air Florida, Jet America, and a couple dozen other carriers all expecting to beat the legacies at their own game. Most failed, but two of those carriers still exist today --
Exactly, so there is more to this game than price. What we have created is a monster, LCC carrier with trunk capacity and comparitivly low debt, thats something that didnt exist before.
PE is largely intact as CO's EWR hub, and Jet America is what put Alaska Airlines firmly into southern California.
PE is dead, its just as dead as Air Cal or Trans Carib. When you ate that burger the cow did not continue to live inside you.
The "new" upstarts - Airtran, Jetblue, Spirit, Allegiant, and Frontier - aren't as doe-eyed as their predecessors from 20 years ago. In fact, most of the strategy and planning folks at those carriers came from legacies and know their weaknesses better than you'd think.
Yea yea yea, so all those other guys were dummies but todays guys are so much smarter, ZZZZZZZZZZZ.
So... while you may have valid grievances about the TWU, complaining about them in the context of a grander plan to provide cheap air transport is about as worthwhile of an effort as it was to polish the deck rails on the Titanic as it was sinking further and further into the ocean...
Well I guess that applies to working harder for less as well.
It's a fact that AA is again one of the higher priced producers in the US airline industry. People like me are willing to pay a little more for quality. My company will pay more for it as well, however we, too, have a profit/loss to be concerned about, so if AA continues to be uncompetitive on cost, my business will head elsewhere, and AA will go the way of Pan Am and TWA.
Maybe it will, and hopefully SWA, which pays much better will fill in the gap. Wouldnt be the first time most of us have changed carriers. In fact I've even worked on the same exact aircraft for different carriers. Hope you like flying in a 737 to Shanghai.
It's also a fact that how AA stays competitive on a profit/loss basis is a matter of keeping income greater than expenses.
And spending billions on new terminals that have the same number of gates as the ones they replaced must really help keep costs down.
You can say the workers aren't responsible for the situation, but quite frankly, YOU are responsible for AA's long term health as much as Gerard Arpey is.
Wrong, I'm resposible for doing what I'm assigned to do, repair and service aircraft, thats it.
Until YOU and other employees start taking ownership of the situation (instead of holding onto decades old grudges against your union leaders and pointing middle fingers at anyone with a management pay grade), you're essentially f***ed.
Wrong again, who says you have to own a company in order to work for it? If a plumber comes to your house does he have to work for less so you can pay your electric bill? NO, he provides a service and gets his pay, he doesnt have an ownership stake in your house or your liabilities.
All this "ownership" BS is nothing but a corporate fad, a few years back the word was "synergies", ah yes Synergies were the way to go, every corporate strategy was built around it, then a few years later it was back to "core businesses". Now they are throwing out this bullshit about "ownership" , "you have to take ownership" of what you dont own. You have to be willing to sacrifice for what you dont own, but you should treat it as if you own it.
Just pay me a fair wage, if you close tomorrow somebody else will start flying the millions of people that want to go from one place to another.
