It's official!

[MetalMover]

Delta will earn, on average, 26% more than their AA counterparts.
Delta employees will receive a PS payout valued at more than 1 BILLION dollars or about 2 months pay.

American CEO Doug Parker is opposed to profit sharing .
"It's not the right way to pay employees.
So much is tied to profits like Ebola, fuel prices and a bunch of things we can't control....( all things other airlines faced)...

Employees are payed a fair wage and after that " ALL" profits go to share holders.
It's not the right way to pay employees that don't have that much of an impact on daily profits" Parker stated!

Sounds like the IAM and other unions are doing a fine job representing theirs dues owers at AA!

Ask yourself these questions.  Are you willing to work with no union? Become an employee at will? Have no preference on bidding shift, days off and vacation based on seniority? Get laid off regardless of seniority?
If profit sharing is that important to you....be my guest!
 
To take a legacy carrier and overnight go non union......They will not know what to do first with you. 

 

[NYer]

 
Now Mark you are certainly leaving a lot out.  Such as the fact there is a process to increase pressure on both sides to move, waiting year after year after year, when you are already at the bottom only puts pressure on the members and serves the company's interests. The mechanics voted down their TA and for the first time I'm aware in any airline sect 6 negotiations of the union did not proceed to the next step, release, then self help or PEB, with the expectation that negotiations continue in the interum.   Instead the International, with you as advisor,  went backwards to mediation. --Moving towards "self-help" and a Presidential Emergency Board lies in the hands of the National Mediation Board, no one else. It was very clear the NMB had no intention to move the process forward from Mediation.
 
First off there was never any talk of AA liquidating,  that came from Mark Richards and Jim Little as a scare tactic. One of many inaccurate statements Mark Richards made to the Negotiating Committee. --YOU mentioned it was better to liquidate. YOU gave a detailed account as to the advantages of liquidation and looked at it as a saving grace, something that would help the cause of the profession.
 
Mark Richards told the committee that if we didn’t agree to the concessions that the court would most certainly abrogate and when they did we would have no contract, we would be at will employees, no just cause, no check off, nothing and the company could do whatever they wanted and we could not strike. --That's the BK process.
 
That was a lie. Court decisions on Airline contracts were clear that the reason why airline workers could not strike is because they did still have a contract, upon abrogation, they impose the terms already proposed by management, that becomes the contract and those terms did not include getting rid of Just Cause or Checkoff and its unlikely the court would consider such demands necessary for the plan.  The terms of the ask must meet the criteria that what they are asking for is necessary for the reorganization. The court admitted that if they were to wipe out the contract and have no contract, like everyone else in Bankruptcy, that we could strike. --"It is important to know that Judge Lane has repeatedly said in open court that, unlike the bankruptcy judge in Northwest, if he decides that American Airlines can abrogate our CBA, he does not believe he has the authority to and, therefore, would not put any conditions on the terms that management can put into place after the abrogation. Our lawyers have told us that management could, at worst, impose any term they wanted if our contract is abrogated, and, at best, impose the terms of the April term sheet...Some pilots have speculated that the bankruptcy court’s decision in Northwest would require American to impose only the terms of the June 20 “Last, Best Offer” (LBO) if the court orders rejection. Judge Lane has repeatedly stated on the record that he believes he does not have the authority to approve specific terms as part of his rejection order. American Airlines management has asked for permission to implement the terms of their April 19 proposal — the last proposal they made before the trial began on the 1113 motion. The unions and the Unsecured Creditors’ Committee all argued that Judge Lane does not have the authority to “bless” any particular terms. Judge Lane agreed in open court, stating several times that he thinks that Section 1113 does not give him authority to “bless” any particular terms." APA Communication to Members.
 
I guess you know more than the APA and their lawyers.
 
"Flight attendants at Northwest Airlines are not allowed to strike, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday, affirming a lower court ruling and lifting a cloud hanging over the bankrupt carrier. The ruling, from the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, protects Northwest from a potentially devastating strike threatened by the workers after Northwest voided their labor contract last year with court permission." --NY Times
 
I guess you also know more than Federal Judges
 
My argument against agreeing to more concessions was that we were already at the bottom of the industry, that it didn’t make sense for us to agree to more concessions other than increased outsourcing and the pension because those were the only two things where we were not at the bottom of the industry. The law says that the debtor has to show that the terms were onerous to get the contract thrown out,  granted the courts have taken this with a grain of salt but how could they say our contract was onerous when we were at the bottom in pay, vacation, holidays, shift pay, overtime pay, training pay, health benefits, uniforms, sick time, etc etc? --You don't have to agree to anything, but then the Court has the legal right to abrogate the entire contract and the Company can impose their will. I guess that's a better option? You make it sound like there are viable choices within the process. There have been 166 airline bankruptcies and I'd like to study a case in which your theory of rejection of concessions within that process has worked out. 
 
Mark  Richard said none of that matters that its not negotiable and that we had to meet the company’s number.  (What Mark left out was it obviously was negotiable because the ask went from 20% to 17%) Once again that turned out to be a lie, because around the same time Mark was doing his best to bend us over for the company Pinnicle Airlines, whose pilots were also below industry standard refused to meet the company’s ask  in their Bankruptcy case and the Pinnicle sought to have the contract abrogated, and what happened? The Judge refused to abrogate based upon the fact that the company could not prove that a contract that was already below industry standard was onerous and what they were asking for was necessary. He told Pinnicle they had to adjust their ask. Despite the fact we were in the same position as the pilots at Pinnicle we never even tried to make the argument. --Not nearly in the same position, but let's just go over your opinion....
 
You said, "the Judge refused to abrogate based upon the fact that the company could not prove that a contract that was already below industry standard was onerous....However, the Judge actually said, "Pinnacle’s need for significant reductions in labor costs is profound. Though Delta failed to do everything it could have done to document the extent to which Pinnacle’s labor costs exceed those of other Delta regional carriers, Pinnacle’s own efforts to investigate that issue satisfied the Court that Pinnacle’s pilot labor costs are way over market. And Pinnacle’s liquidity issues make it clear that Pinnacle cannot continue under the status quo. As unfortunate as pay cuts for the Pilots would be, the liquidation of Pinnacle, and the loss of 5,800 jobs, would be far worse."
 
So, I'd assume you believe it was a victory for the Pinnacle pilots not having the CBA abrogated, but this was the contract they finally agreed to, "The union said the new seven-year agreement includes, among other cuts, a 9 percent reduction in pay for all pilots plus longevity caps to all pay scales which will further cut the pay of more than half of Pinnacle's pilots by as much as another 16 percent. In addition to almost 25 percent pay cuts, the deal also increases health care costs for all pilots while reducing pilot retirement benefits by more than 50 percent for Pinnacle's most senior pilots."
 
Pilots, sure they gave 17% but 17% is a negotiable number. You keep saying these lies that this and that is not negotiable, that simply untrue, you said the 20% was not negotiable, then it became 17%. The pilots and company met the 17% by adjusting the values of the items that make up the ask. --The pilots were the last group to approve their CBA with the 17% instead of the 20%. (minor detail, I guess)
 
"On September 4, 2012, Judge Sean H. Lane granted American's renewed motion to reject its CBA with the Allied Pilots Association...The court also rejected the APA's new argument that because American had agreed to a 17% labor cost savings with its other union and non-union employees, American's request for a 20% labor cost reduction from the APA was not necessary to its reorganization."
 
All the numbers are theoretical appoximations or assumptions to start with, one could argue that a concession is worth more or worth less (something else Mark Richards said we could not do but other groups did)  For instance, Mark Richards right hand man, the Economist John Donnelley, (who is now management at SWA) who sat through not only the BK but also was the Economist in 2003 for the TWU and gave us a cost out in 2010 for sick time that was much much higher than the total value he vetted back in 2003 even though our hourly wage was lower and we had 35% fewer workers. In other words when we lost it, sick time was given a much lower total value than when we asked for the same thing back even though both the hourly wage and the number of members was much lower.  IIRC getting back to twelve days of sick time would have cost us double to get back with 12000 workers at a lower hourly rate than we were given credit  for in 2003 when we were at a higher rate and had over 16000 workers. How was this possible? It wasn’t, the assumptions were changed and that changed the figure, so to say they still got 17% may on the face of it seem factual, but by rejecting the deal the pilots did get improvements, they just didn’t rub it in everyone’s faces and the company buried the additional cost in the assumptions because even the assumptions are negotiable. --The pilots were facing an abrogation that would have meant 20% cuts instead of the 17% cuts already agreed by the other unions. The pilots 17% was accepted after everyone else so to say their abrogation led to a better percentage is just not supported by the time lines. Further, this isn't Section 6 negotiations...it is a bankruptcy and the trigger for the cut from 20% to 17% was the added value of the US Airways merger, as seen by the Creditors.
 
The pilots also went into BK well within industry standards, they were nowhere near the bottom like us. In BK, the threshold for cuts isn't compared to the standing one group has within their industry.
 
The Creditors are now the shareholders and they are always in charge. So their status is no longer a creditor, they are owners. Owners of corporations do not determine each mangement decision on the day to day management of the company, not every contract is brought back to the shareholder/owners, they can fire managers for agreeing to bad contracts and poorly managing the company but they don't have the same decision making power in the business plan as a Creditors committee in Bankruptcy. 
 
Where did I say that all you have to do is ask and you will get it? I will say that if you don’t ask that you probably wont get it, but according to you we shouldn’t even ask because they might get mad. --I'd like to see where I said that.
 
BTW AA isn’t in BK anymore. So any deal cut in BK can be renegotiated as long as both parties agree. You would think that would be obvious enough with the fact that you were out there saying how we could get new deals with the JCBA. In their NPA the language was silent as far as the term. The creditors committee agreed to the NPA and the NPA opened the door. --Technically, the AMR BK is still an ongoing court process. Nevertheless, the company is bound by the Plan of Reorganization which runs for 6 years and it's the reason for the need of cost certainties in all the union CBA's. It is also the reason for the agreement of arbitration by the APA and APFA as the merger came with certain needed positions sought by the Creditors in order to go along with the merger within the BK process. All this stuff isn't done in a vacuum, as much as you might hope it is.
 
All I can say is if you want to pay a lawyer to entertain you and crack jokes, hire Mark Richard, if you want a lawyer who is going to help the company get whatever they want and give you bad information, hire Mark Richard, but if you want a lawyer who is going to fight to make sure you get the best deal possible and give you sound legal advice, DO NOT HIRE MARK RICHARD. --So who is the lawyer that achieved better outcomes in an airline BK? It's fine to lambast someone you don't like such as Mark Richard, John Donnelly, Tom Roth, Sharon Levine, Judge Sean Lane and a whole host of characters...who do we replace them with? Who would have afforded a better outcome? (before you type, "anyone," think again...that's too easy)
 

 

[NYer]

Everything is negotiable. 

 
Not in bankruptcy.

 

[Duke787]

Ask yourself these questions.  Are you willing to work with no union? Become an employee at will? Have no preference on bidding shift, days off and vacation based on seniority? Get laid off regardless of seniority?
If profit sharing is that important to you....be my guest!
 
To take a legacy carrier and overnight go non union......They will not know what to do first with you.

Is that why there are so many happy employees at delta? I talked with a former NWA FA who's at delta now, she prefers non union shop better working conditions and less slackera.

 

[Slopoke]

Is that why there are so many happy employees at delta? I talked with a former NWA FA who's at delta now, she prefers non union shop better working conditions and less slackera.

 
Not to derail the thread, but I posted a question on the Delta forum while back and it's not all doom and gloom with the AMTs not having a union.
 
http://www.airlineforums.com/topic/57855-question-regarding-unions-for-delta-amts/

 

[Duke787]

Not to derail the thread, but I posted a question on the Delta forum while back and it's not all doom and gloom with the AMTs not having a union.
 
http://www.airlineforums.com/topic/57855-question-regarding-unions-for-delta-amts/

That was an interesting thread, it seems like the biggest union blowhards are the same guys that have to be TOLD to bring tools to the gate on a through trip, or placard a FA work light with 2 hour ground time.

 

[MetalMover]

Is that why there are so many happy employees at delta? I talked with a former NWA FA who's at delta now, she prefers non union shop better working conditions and less slackera.

It's not for everyone. Delta has always been non union with the exception of the pilots. That is their culture. 
If you think that AA will all of a sudden treat employees like those of Delta were they to go non union, you are dreaming.
At JFK we have quire a few mechanics that left Delta for AA. They were far from happy.

 

[Bob Owens]

 
--Moving towards "self-help" and a Presidential Emergency Board lies in the hands of the National Mediation Board, no one else. It was very clear the NMB had no intention to move the process forward from Mediation.
 
 
 

 
What does the law say?  We negotiated for four years, in mediation for three and the members rejected a TA. Once again, please show me where after a TA was rejected the NMB still would not release the parties from mediation. While the law doesn’t spell out a timeline it does spell out a process and even the NMB would have to justify why they refuse to move forward if the Union filed suit. On the one hand the NMB told us they saw no reason to continue with mediation and a decent lawyer should be able to argue that the law says when the NMB feels mediation will not produce an agreement the parties are to be released. When they told us they saw no point in “wasting the governments money with continued mediation” they were admitting that they felt they went as far as they could with that part of the process. Sure they NMB could argue that “putting us on ice” was a means to get the process moving but a decent lawyer would have been able to argue that the parties had already been in negotiations for four years, clearly the process was not moving the parties closer and the process needs to move to the next step.
 
 

"Flight attendants at Northwest Airlines are not allowed to strike, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday, affirming a lower court ruling and lifting a cloud hanging over the bankrupt carrier. The ruling, from the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, protects Northwest from a potentially devastating strike threatened by the workers after Northwest voided their labor contract last year with court permission." --NY Times
 
 
I guess you also know more than Federal Judges

That’s a media story, not a Judges written opinion. Surely you know the difference?  
 
And what happened at NWA? Did they become "at will " employees with no contract? Did the union lose checkoff. Could the company do anything they want because they had no contract? None of that happened, the court imposed terms, which was a negotiated modified ask, there has been disagreement within the court system as to whether he should have imposed what was rejected or the original ask, but none of the decisions within the airline industry left airline workers without a contract. If they had no contract they could strike. 
 
 

--The pilots were facing an abrogation that would have meant 20% cuts instead of the 17% cuts already agreed by the other unions. The pilots 17% was accepted after everyone else so to say their abrogation led to a better percentage is just not supported by the time lines. Further, this isn't Section 6 negotiations...it is a bankruptcy and the trigger for the cut from 20% to 17% was the added value of the US Airways merger, as seen by the Creditors.

Once again you spin and lie, I didn’t say their rejection led to the drop from 20% to 17% I said they got an improved deal by voting NO even though they posted percentage did not change.  IIRC the changes led to better pay for those at the bottom end. They buried the increased cost so it would not trigger the “Me Too” Clauses. IIRC we were told that the drop from 20% to 17% was due to the company’s decision to freeze and not dump our pensions into the PBGC. The 3% was waived because the company would have either had to change all the values of the concessions or take more in order to get to the 20% .
 
 
 
 

In BK, the threshold for cuts isn't compared to the standing one group has within their industry.

Maybe, but not every creditor has to give the same exact percentage of concessions either. That is what our legal team told us and it wasn't true. Like I said, you guys never even fought for us. The fact is in the law says that the threshold contract has to be "onerous" and the changes have to be necessary to the success of the plan, standing within the industry is most certainly a factor there. If your legal team doesn't even bother to bring that forward then they has done a disservice to the people they claim to be representing. 
 
 
 

--I'd like to see where I said that.

Right after you show me where I said all you have to do is and you will get.
 

--Technically, the AMR BK is still an ongoing court process. Nevertheless, the company is bound by the Plan of Reorganization which runs for 6 years and it's the reason for the need of cost certainties in all the union CBA's. It is also the reason for the agreement of arbitration by the APA and APFA as the merger came with certain needed positions sought by the Creditors in order to go along with the merger within the BK process. All this stuff isn't done in a vacuum, as much as you might hope it is.

 
 
 
 Well the rejected TA proves that you are lying again because according to those in favor of it it’s a cost increase of $190 million over the contract that was agreed to in BK and its $83 million over what the NPA stipulated. If what you are saying is correct then why didn’t Parker say to the Flight Attendants that he has to clear any changes with the Creditors Committee? No its not all in the vacuum, and unfortunately for you its not all done in the dark either.
 
 

. --So who is the lawyer that achieved better outcomes in an airline BK? It's fine to lambast someone you don't like such as Mark Richard, John Donnelly, Tom Roth, Sharon Levine, Judge Sean Lane and a whole host of characters...who do we replace them with? Who would have afforded a better outcome? (before you type, "anyone," think again...that's too easy)

Still too easy. Considering that we gave millions more in concessions than the pilots but only got 4% equity vs their 15% the APA team of lawyers did a much better job than you guys. Considering that the APFA got 9% 401K contribution compared to our 5.5% match I’d say their team did a much better job than our legal team.  I’m too lazy to look up their names but you know who they are. We went in at the bottom and you guys never even made a concerted effort to bring that point forward like the legal team for Pinnicle's pilots, so there’s another team who did a better job in BK. Sure the Pinnicle pilots gave concessions but the fact is that the ask was negotiable even though you said it wasn't and the Judge did refuse the request to abrogate when they didn't meet that ask. Sure you can quote the first part of the Judges comments but Judges nearly always make a point of citing the losing argument before they give their final ruling, the fact is that he did not abrogate, they went back in and negotiated, (did Pinnicle have $5billion in the bank and a financed order to 500 new planes as well when they filed?) Actually Roth did a pretty good job, unlike Mark Richard who simply made things up as he went he simply laid out the facts, minimal spin and no lies. He was forced to do a Video where he looks like he is being crucified but unlike Mark Richard he wasn't trying to rush the committee over the cliff with a bunch of distortions and lies. Another area where our team let us down was outsourcing, most of our outsourcing went overseas because our language, unlike Uniteds and Southwests allowed it all to go overseas, but Mark Richard and Sharon Levine let them use Domestic outsourcing rates for the savings value, so we gave not only far in excess of 17%, we gave far in excess of 20% even though we were only credited with 17%. Once again, Mark Richard said this was not negotiable. When they figured out what value we were to be given for outsourcing they subtracted what they figured they would have to pay. So if the "all in" at AA  was $80/hr in house and they figured if they had their widebodies done with outsourcing domestically they could be paying $70/hr we only got credit for $10/hr for each job we lost to outsourcing, so when they shipped it to Asia or if they shipped South America where they may pay just $30/hr the company got to pocket even more savings without us getting credit for it. At United they wrote in language that makes them do the narrow bodies domestically, we have no such language, United got that language in bankruptcy but as you all hear here, for us it was "not negotiable". So even their lawyers did a better job fighting for their mechanics than ours did. Just in headcount loss alone our contract value dropped by 20%, but because of the unchallenged figures and assumptions, and the refusal of our lawyers to aggressively challenge them, we ended up giving up much, much more than 20%. So in the end you are right, the answer to the opening question of who would we have been better off with is "anybody" because everybody did better than we did. 

 

[commavia]

Once again, please show me where after a TA was rejected the NMB still would not release the parties from mediation. 

 
Didn't the US AFA flight attendants reject a TA not once, but twice, without the NMB letting them leave impasse purgatory?

 

[Bob Owens]

 
Didn't the US AFA flight attendants reject a TA not once, but twice, without the NMB letting them leave impasse purgatory?

Don't know. Show me a link. The NWA Flight Attendants did reject a TA , but in bankruptcy, not in Section 6.
 
 
My point is that during normal Section 6 negotiations its a process, normally if a an agreement was made through Mediated talks and still rejected it goes to the next step in the process which is release by the board but its not required to have a vote to move on. Normally if the board determines that more talks will not lead to an agreement they can release the parties without a rejected TA. The NMB did tell us that they felt that way but the TWU requested more talks without being released. The intent of the law is to create a process where cooler heads will prevail so it is designed to slow things down compared to traditional negotiations outside the RLA but it was not the intent of the authors to let that be abused to the point we see it being abused now. 
 
I have no doubt that NYer will cite the 8 years of Amtrak negotiations, but thats a complicated situation and certainly not the norm. Mark Richard cited it often but left out all the details which I learned from reading and speaking to one of the TWU members from the rail division. The Amtrak situation involved many contracts and the one that was amendable had Cola adjustments in it so they continued getting pay rate increases throughout the eight years until they all were settled, and they got retro pay. 

 

[FWAAA]

Don't know. Show me a link. The NWA Flight Attendants did reject a TA , but in bankruptcy, not in Section 6.

US Airways flight attendants rejected the same TA twice in 2012 and eventually ratified it in early 2013.

Rejected the TA on March 30, 2012: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/03/us_airways_flight_attendants_r.html

And then rejected it again on Sept 27, 2012: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2012/09/us-airways-flight-attendants-reject-tentative-agreement.html

http://archive.azcentral.com/business/news/articles/20130125us-airways-union-reach-pact.html

 

[NYer]

 
What does the law say?  We negotiated for four years, in mediation for three and the members rejected a TA. Once again, please show me where after a TA was rejected the NMB still would not release the parties from mediation. While the law doesn’t spell out a timeline it does spell out a process and even the NMB would have to justify why they refuse to move forward if the Union filed suit. --And the NMB is the business to "effectively meet its statutory objectives avoiding interruption to commerce." Unfortunately, they're not there for us and they acted like it.
 
On the one hand the NMB told us they saw no reason to continue with mediation and a decent lawyer should be able to argue that the law says when the NMB feels mediation will not produce an agreement the parties are to be released. --You believe a "decent" lawyer will go in a win a case against the National Mediation Board and their ability to set the meaning of "exert every reasonable effort," in negotiations. They set the pace and they are the vigilance of avoiding interruption to commerce, no judge will expose themselves to that liability.
 
When they told us they saw no point in “wasting the governments money with continued mediation” they were admitting that they felt they went as far as they could with that part of the process. Sure they NMB could argue that “putting us on ice” was a means to get the process moving but a decent lawyer would have been able to argue that the parties had already been in negotiations for four years, clearly the process was not moving the parties closer and the process needs to move to the next step. --As smart as you believe you are, you actually believe the NMB and the courts will be fooled by a group stalling the mediation process in order to trigger a impasse. That's laughable to think that an organization that has dealt with hundreds of mediation's will allow themselves to be pigeonholed by any one group or overrun by a "decent" lawyer.
 
That’s a media story, not a Judges written opinion. Surely you know the difference?  Copy. We'll add that to the list of your unworthy sources of information. That list is quickly dwindling down to just include yourself. =/
 
And what happened at NWA? Did they become "at will " employees with no contract? --The flight attendants had the pleasure of voting for a third time to take pay cuts of 21%.
 
Did the union lose checkoff. Could the company do anything they want because they had no contract? None of that happened, the court imposed terms, which was a negotiated modified ask, there has been disagreement within the court system as to whether he should have imposed what was rejected or the original ask, but none of the decisions within the airline industry left airline workers without a contract. If they had no contract they could strike. --That is what the flight attendants wanted, a strike. They were not allowed to strike and their contract could have been abrogated. The judge decided to give them another chance to negotiate a settlement and NW didn't abrogate even though they could, eventually they ratified a contract that included a 21% pay cut.
 
 
Once again you spin and lie, I didn’t say their rejection led to the drop from 20% to 17% I said they got an improved deal by voting NO even though they posted percentage did not change.  IIRC the changes led to better pay for those at the bottom end. They buried the increased cost so it would not trigger the “Me Too” Clauses. IIRC we were told that the drop from 20% to 17% was due to the company’s decision to freeze and not dump our pensions into the PBGC. The 3% was waived because the company would have either had to change all the values of the concessions or take more in order to get to the 20% . --So they got a better deal "even though the posted percentage did not change"? The other unions already had agreements in the 17% threshold, with the APA being the last union group to actually agree to the 17% and somehow that is a victory to voting no. Did your calculator run out of batteries?
 
And you actually believe the Company and the APA, pulled the sheets over the eyes of the BK Court and ALL the Secured and Unsecured Creditors? Of course you don't, but you have to give some kind of rhetoric to explain why your theory of a strike or voting no is not flawed. Problem is that those explanations are getting more and more unrealistic.
 
Maybe, but not every creditor has to give the same exact percentage of concessions either. That is what our legal team told us and it wasn't true. Like I said, you guys never even fought for us. The fact is in the law says that the threshold contract has to be "onerous" and the changes have to be necessary to the success of the plan, standing within the industry is most certainly a factor there. If your legal team doesn't even bother to bring that forward then they has done a disservice to the people they claim to be representing. --Quite entertaining, but off the mark. The litmus test for the cuts is that they need to be "fair and equitable." That determination is made by the court and argued by the creditors. It isn't a guide of comparison to other airlines or other bankruptcies.
 
 
Well the rejected TA proves that you are lying again because according to those in favor of it it’s a cost increase of $190 million over the contract that was agreed to in BK and its $83 million over what the NPA stipulated. If what you are saying is correct then why didn’t Parker say to the Flight Attendants that he has to clear any changes with the Creditors Committee? No its not all in the vacuum, and unfortunately for you its not all done in the dark either. --Because that threshold was created during the BK and Merger talks. The floor or starting point was to be what was agreed to and what became the basis for the arbitration. The ceiling was set and reached the $193M mark. Since that high point was agreed to and expected, it might be only reason Parker is considering giving them the agreed to wages. The other work rules that were voted down remain down. I guess that part of the equation, what Parker wants (if anything) in exchange for the higher wages.
 
 
Still too easy. Considering that we gave millions more in concessions than the pilots but only got 4% equity vs their 15% the APA team of lawyers did a much better job than you guys. --The APA gave up substantially more in pension payouts than any other group, hence their higher payout.
 
Considering that the APFA got 9% 401K contribution compared to our 5.5% match I’d say their team did a much better job than our legal team. --If they all received the 9%, you'd be right. They had a sliding scale which paid some flight attendants 9%, others were paid less depending on their age or time of service.
 
 I’m too lazy to look up their names but you know who they are. We went in at the bottom and you guys never even made a concerted effort to bring that point forward like the legal team for Pinnicle's pilots, so there’s another team who did a better job in BK. --The pilots at Pinnacle ended up with a 7 year CBA with "almost 25 percent pay cuts, the deal also increases health-care costs for all pilots while reducing pilot retirement benefits by more than 50 percent for Pinnacle’s most senior pilots." (better job?)
 
Sure the Pinnicle pilots gave concessions but the fact is that the ask was negotiable even though you said it wasn't and the Judge did refuse the request to abrogate when they didn't meet that ask. Sure you can quote the first part of the Judges comments but Judges nearly always make a point of citing the losing argument before they give their final ruling, the fact is that he did not abrogate, they went back in and negotiated, (did Pinnicle have $5billion in the bank and a financed order to 500 new planes as well when they filed?) --No they did not. If a corporation with $29B in debt can file for bankruptcy the best outcome for Labor is for that corporation to be able to avoid Debtor-in-Possesion (DIP) financing which carries many detrimental items. The most common is included in "First Day Motions" which give the corporation immediate, but temporary, labor. The main purpose of DIP is to allow the corporation to have the liquidity to continue with operations. Since AMR filed with $4B in cash it was able to avoid DIP financing thereby sparing Labor with further cuts.
 
Actually Roth did a pretty good job, unlike Mark Richard who simply made things up as he went he simply laid out the facts, minimal spin and no lies. He was forced to do a Video where he looks like he is being crucified but unlike Mark Richard he wasn't trying to rush the committee over the cliff with a bunch of distortions and lies. Another area where our team let us down was outsourcing, most of our outsourcing went overseas because our language, unlike Uniteds and Southwests allowed it all to go overseas, but Mark Richard and Sharon Levine let them use Domestic outsourcing rates for the savings value, so we gave not only far in excess of 17%, we gave far in excess of 20% even though we were only credited with 17%. --Tom Roth helped with all those valuations. He was the finance guys that was in charge of making sure the valuation were correct. Since you have praised him here, that must mean you're incorrect in your assessment. (Unless you want to include him in your substantial list of incompetents)
 
"Tom Roth of The Labor Bureau Inc. joined the TWU financial advisory team this week and met with our negotiators briefly on Thursday....[Tom is] working with our negotiators daily to help decipher and analyze company spreadsheets."
 
 
Once again, Mark Richard said this was not negotiable. When they figured out what value we were to be given for outsourcing they subtracted what they figured they would have to pay. So if the "all in" at AA  was $80/hr in house and they figured if they had their widebodies done with outsourcing domestically they could be paying $70/hr we only got credit for $10/hr for each job we lost to outsourcing, so when they shipped it to Asia or if they shipped South America where they may pay just $30/hr the company got to pocket even more savings without us getting credit for it. At United they wrote in language that makes them do the narrow bodies domestically, we have no such language, United got that language in bankruptcy but as you all hear here, for us it was "not negotiable". --You always tell us how you were part of the negotiating committee, but the excuses of what wasn't achieved always comes back to someone else. Why do we have you there is you can't do anything to stop what you believe shouldn't be happening.
 
So even their lawyers did a better job fighting for their mechanics than ours did. Just in headcount loss alone our contract value dropped by 20%, but because of the unchallenged figures and assumptions, and the refusal of our lawyers to aggressively challenge them, we ended up giving up much, much more than 20%. So in the end you are right, the answer to the opening question of who would we have been better off with is "anybody" because everybody did better than we did. --They did better? If you say so...."It now has about 30 percent fewer employees (58,000), 20 percent fewer airplanes (460) and 20 percent lower operating costs... Labor costs are down by more than $3 billion annually after two steep pay cuts and the elimination of defined-benefit pensions." February 2, 2006

 

[bigjets]

Who's eating crow?

Did the FA's get PS, or a 2 year contract from arbitrator? NO...All the FAs got from arbitrator was a NO to "me too" clauses and the TA minus $82m, and the hard 40 back in contract.

So let's sum this up, the people who advocated a yes vote for TA were right and the blowhards were wrong.


Think of how much money each FA would have missed out on if DP didn't GIVE the FAs the $82m in pay improvements.

Remember it's the NO voters that is causing each FA to fly 40 hrs every month because some hothead on bookface misrepresented or didn't know the facts.

The apfa is now enjoying a nice pay raise while the TWU represented employees will have to wait until 2018,
Now that's Union stupid !

 

[Bob Owens]

Who's eating crow?

Did the FA's get PS, or a 2 year contract from arbitrator? NO...All the FAs got from arbitrator was a NO to "me too" clauses and the TA minus $82m, and the hard 40 back in contract.

So let's sum this up, the people who advocated a yes vote for TA were right and the blowhards were wrong.


Think of how much money each FA would have missed out on if DP didn't GIVE the FAs the $82m in pay improvements.

Remember it's the NO voters that is causing each FA to fly 40 hrs every month because some hothead on bookface misrepresented or didn't know the facts.

The apfa is now enjoying a nice pay raise while the TWU represented employees will have to wait until 2018,
Now that's Union stupid !

But Parker did. So technically by voting it down what did they lose? So all the Yes voters who said that the No voters just cost them $82 million were wrong and from what has been claimed here they still have the adjuster from the award should the aggregate be shifted beyond what AA gave. The rejection may have even been a factor in the subsequent 4% that Parker threw out there after realizing that his plans were not going to be a slam dunk. 
 
As far as having to fly 40 hours each month, well do Professional Flight Attendants really want this to be a part time job? Lets face it if they aren't putting in 40 hours a month its not their primary income. 

 

[WeAAsles]

The apfa is now enjoying a nice pay raise while the TWU represented employees will have to wait until 2018,
Now that's Union stupid !

I very much doubt that TWU represented employees will be waiting till 2018. First we did have to wait until the IAM represented members finished their standalone negotiations and now we're waiting for the NMB to make there ruling on the Association?

We are behind the eight ball though compared to the other groups, that's no lie.

Since we don't have an Arbitration backstop the only way I can see us rolling till 2018 is if we have radical negotiators than sensible ones when the talks begin? Not being in section 6 of the RLA if our negotiators want to put up a stone wall on too many items then the company could walk (Worst case scenario) and say "See you in 2018" and even much further under that section 6 bargaining language that seems like they will NEVER release to strike.