Koolcat
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- Mar 21, 2014
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He's no Little Guy! He's the one who put the stop to the CWA deal that little was setting up.
JCBA Negotiations and updates for AA Fleet
- Thread starter AANOTOK
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well i hope he's got a plan to deal with this fiASSSco
dariencc
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- Dec 4, 2006
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Rat, Has the company said anything about Delta/United parity for you guys since the pilot and f/a announcement last week?
Hourly salary we are already higher, but.....
cltrat
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- Aug 29, 2007
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not a word imo we aren't getting anything else till there's a jcba
robbedagain
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- Oct 13, 2003
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Wall Street probably wants to see AA cut its debts very similar to DL but DP feels similar to how Herb Keller feels take care employees and the employees will take care the customer I think that's what DP is thinking but Wall Street being as crooked as they are are in a complete state of shock Id be bullish on AA too oil is low and it appears itll stay that way for a while if not a long long time The keystone pipeline plus offshore drilling should pump more oil in our country and if all is proven true it cld be a key indicator the oil stays low and thus more profits for the airline s not to mention if and this is a big if should they increase fees or add other fees or airfares then wall street could see things differently at AA
OP
AANOTOK
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- Oct 10, 2009
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Robbed, if Doug wanted to take care of the employees, we would have a contract by now, or at least worse case we would be meeting more frequently. The Pilots and F/A's with their collective pull made Doug dig into his pockets, IMO. The Association has no pull. Lombardo probably knew this and bailed.
Them there parachutes allow you to land gently...
Them there parachutes allow you to land gently...
WeAAsles
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- Oct 20, 2007
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Lombardo was 68 almost 69 years old and he retired on the 45th Anniversary of when he first hired on at Philly Transit.
And the entire World doesn't revolve around just us, although many of us seem to think it does.
gulfcoast1
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- Apr 10, 2016
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They way I understand it, Keystone will also allow Canadian tar sand oil to reach Houston where it can be sold to the highest bidder, something which is now not economical and results in the Canadian oil being sold in the USA and Canada.
I hope you are right and the oil stays in North America keeping our costs down.
Last I heard large scale US Oil exports were not allowed. Does anyone know if this is still the case?
NYer
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- Jun 4, 2010
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Oy vey. So naive.
Your handlers must love how easily they make you pass along their spin.
WeAAsles
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The Cheif.
Samuelsen Joins Bid For Takeover of International
By SARAH DORSEY | Posted: Monday, July 22, 2013 4:30 pm
Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen announced July 16 he’ll seek the second-highest office at the TWU International, joining with current Executive Vice President Harry Lombardo in a surprise bid they say will take the union in a more aggressive direction.
The current International president portrayed the move as a “self-serving” power grab propelled in part by the strictures he’s put on spending since he took over seven years ago.
Mr. Samuelsen said he has no intention of giving up the Local 100 presidency; he was elected to his second three-year term in December. He insisted in an interview last week that his priority remains obtaining a fair contract for the local, whose last pact expired Jan. 15, 2012.
The announcement comes just six weeks after International President James Little appointed Mr. Samuelsen to a top-five spot as Administrative Vice President, for which he would have had to compete for re-election at the union’s September convention.
Mr. Lombardo, the former head of the Philadelphia local, served as one of 11 vice presidents of the International for a decade before being voted second-in-command by the executive council in 2006. He began as a Car Cleaner in the Philadelphia rail system, and as president, led a 1995 strike that resulted in wage increases and other benefits for members. He is seeking the International presidency.
Mr. Lombardo’s slate last week accused Mr. Little of “timid” leadership, blaming him for an ongoing raid by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) on TWU’s airline mechanics. (The transit union is currently challenging signatures the IBT gathered before the National Mediation Board.)
The slate also slammed the union’s recent agreement to represent American Airlines workers jointly with the International Association of Machinists. American declared bankruptcy and announced it would merge with US Airways; the IAM currently represents US Airways workers. Mr. Samuelsen believes his union should absorb that cohort.
The Local 100 leader accused Mr. Little of a “retreat mentality” for orchestrating the IAM coalition rather than pushing the members to decide between the two unions.
“We vastly outnumber them,” he said. “We’d have won.”
‘A Backroom Deal’
He claimed Mr. Little failed to consult the local presidents or International officials over the deal.
“What if another union tried to raid our Bus Operators in the Bronx and Manhattan and I decided to fight and...he decide to cut a backroom deal?” he said. “It’s spineless and sleazy.”
Mr. Samuelsen accused the International president of facilitating the Teamsters raid by allowing them onto the property to collect signatures so another craft union with similar aims couldn’t get a majority. Calling it “the most bizarre and incompetent scheme that I have ever seen hatched in my 25 years in the labor movement,” he said, “He invited the big, bad wolf into the hen house. You can’t then cry foul when the wolf starts eating the chickens.”
Mr. Little presented a vastly different version of events.
He said the International’s Administrative Council unanimously approved the vote to join with the machinists. (Mr. Samuelsen, who has sat on the Council since June along with Mr. Lombardo and another member of the slate, denies this.) Mr. Little acknowledged that he didn’t consult the local presidents, arguing that time was tight given the ongoing Teamsters raid. But he said he was taking an even more grassroots step than simply consulting the presidents—
""""""""he’d be putting the matter to a ballot vote among the 26,000 rank-and-file members in the division""""""""""""
He also denied his opponents’ depiction of the Teamsters raid. IBT officials approached him because the craft union going after the TWU—the American Mechanics Fraternal Association—was simultaneously seeking to poach Teamsters members at another airline, Mr. Little said.
Crises like bankruptcies are opportune times to raid other unions.
“People don’t know if they’re going to have a job; they’re losing benefits; people don’t know where to turn,” he noted, arguing that members will grasp for any solution at such a time.
He claimed that the Teamsters promised to warn members against an AMFA takeover, but they were really collecting cards supporting their own raid. When enough employees wanted the IBT to represent them, Teamsters President James Hoffa said he “couldn’t walk away from them,” Mr. Little recalled.
“John has not been involved in that at all,” he said of Mr. Samuelsen. “If he’d spent the time worrying about Local 100” he’d be more successful], he said. “He has no information on what goes on at the airlines.”
The International president said the airline issues were just “disguises” to mask his opponents’ true gripes. He said he supported direct election of union officers by the rank and file, and his challengers wanted to keep the current delegate system.
And he said he’d made unpopular changes that alienated some of the Lombardo slate’s supporters.
“I restricted some salary raises; I made them accountable for expense reports,” he said. “Before I came in, you didn’t even have to fill out expense reports. [People] were handing us shoeboxes with receipts.
“I’ve put policies in place for procedures that were not regularized [before] so everyone [is now] treated equal. We didn’t have any guidelines, what can you spend money on, what can’t you spend money on. So there are a lot of disgruntled people on staff,” he said.
Mr. Little acknowledged that airline employees have been disturbed by the turmoil in the industry, which saw merger after merger over the last 10 years. Some blamed the union, and he said he offered to step aside as recently as last year if Mr. Lombardo and others now on his slate thought it would be best. Mr. Little said he was assured he should stay on.
“I think this whole thing is very self-serving,” he added. “It’s not in the best interest of the membership. Doing this publicly only plays into the problems we have with being raided by the IBT.”
Marsha Spinowitz, an International vice president who previously represented utility workers as the president of Local 101 in Brooklyn and Queens for 26 years, said she was saddened and shocked by Mr. Lombardo’s announcement.
“This feels like a marriage split, like a divorce,” she said. “I feel like the family is broken up and all of the kids have to decide if they’re going to live with mommy or daddy.”
She said when Mr. Samuelsen was offered the Administrative Vice President job last month, it was widely believed there would be harmony among the officers and no challenges would be posed this fall.
“When we fight each other it certainly does nothing to advance the cause of the labor movement,” she added. “The real enemy is corporate greed.”
If Mr. Samuelsen becomes Executive Vice President, he won’t be the first Local 100 president to take the second-highest spot while maintaining his old job. Sonny Hall did so in the early 1990s, and John Lawe did both jobs a decade earlier. Mr. Samuelsen said he’s confident he won’t have to spend more time in Washington at the International headquarters than he does now as Administrative Vice President—a couple of days a month.
WeAAsles
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The company saw a hole and took advantage of it with home base reservations and office base reservations and LAA this allowed the LUS airport agents contract to be Gutted of scope.
The company needed this contract to complete the merger CWA/IBT had major leverage at the bargaining table with the Passenger System cutover as well as having some of the best scope in the industry only to be giving away with a letter of agreement with out a vote from membership while still in negotiations moreover CWA/IBT was the only union on the property to be in section 6 direct negotiations under the RLA unlike the rest of the employees groups were/are in joint contract negotiations Moreover the U.S. Justice Department had a lawsuit against the merger and Parker had to play nice with the union workgroup to avoid controversy.. What is sad is the CWA USAirways negotiating team of the past negotiated far better contact language wile under far worst conditions 2 bankruptcies along with classic J G trying to cram a airline with the worst pay and work rules and the airline industry down the agents throats. Had to threaten a strike with a strike vote just to keep the American West crappie pay and work rules out of our contact.. A lot was a play during the CWA/IBT LAA/LUS negotiations. Naive LAA, CWA representation at Express Envoy and Piedmont Express (whipsawing). Along with a rush to get a contract in place
The CWA/IBT leadership said this was the absolutely the best they could do. All airport CWA president east of the Mississippi were against this contract and were ignored
WeAAsles
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Ok again you said YOU LUS was in Section 6 Negotiations and had a lot of leverage. Absolutely I agree completely YOU did if you wanted to just ignore 70% of your now Brothers and Sisters who did not have the same protections as you and were exposed without having any contractual rights.
We don't control what our Company's want to do business wise and if a merger was something they did and you had people (70%) that agreed to join your Union you become duty bound obligated to represent them. And unfortunately for how people feel personally that obligation is to represent/support the Majority over the Minority.
The story may have been very different if the LAA PSA Agents had organized years ago and brought their own CBA into the Negotiations.
But they didn't.
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