Seriously? You are blaming the TWU for "giving" those things up. You know nothing about BK Dave. Stick to your grinding machine.
Everyone either had their pension frozen or terminated in BK. EVERYONE. Retiree medical? Yep that got cut in BK too at all the other airlines. Work rules? Yep those changed to in BK.
Hmm, but we also gave up a week of vacation for the last 9 years, our peers who went through BK kept that and still have it.
We also lost five holidays for the last 9 years and only get four hours pay for eight hours work on the 5 we supposedly kept, our peers kept most of their holidays and still at least get full pay if they work them.
We also lost 7 sick days and a days pay for the first two we call in sick, our peers kept more sick time than us.
We also lost IOD time, our peers kept more IOD time than us.
We gave all that up to save the stuff we lost anyway, we gave up real money in the here and now for the last 9 years for the promise of the pension and retiree medical in the future. Now they are gone, you say we have an extra 9 years in the pension, well we more than paid for it with the extra week we work for no pay, the holidays we work for no extra pay and the sick time we lost. Figure it out. The 9 years adds at the most $850/month to our pension at 60 years of age. Not even counting the wage cuts we paid for that extra $850 by giving back over $12000 in vacation and counting, over $30,000 in holiday pay (and counting)and we wont even bother looking at the other stuff. By the time I'm 60 I will have worked 18 more weeks than I should have, would have if I was employed elsewhere, for no extra pay and lost the equivelent of 1800 hours of Holiday pay. So that extra $850 that I might live to see will have cost me roughly $85,000 in vacation and Holidays and at least another $34000 from not getting the 401K match the last 9 years. So that $850 that I may see in my pension someday will have cost me at least $118,000 by the time I collect my first check.
AA kept the pension for another nine years, and underfunded it, in part thanks to us lobbying Congress to allow them to underfund it. The company admitted in negotiations that switching over to the DC would actually cost them more now, but that in the future (like when they had to make up for underfunding it) they expected the DC to save them money.
UAL still has retiree medical and unlike what AA is offering us its not 100% funded by the retiree, there is an offset for years with the company.
Work rules? Like 1.75X for all hours away on a FT vs 1.5x only for those hours in excess of eight with the right to pull us off the clock and bring us back on straight time while on a FT? How about straight time pay for training? How about Contractual CS rules vs at managements discretion? How about DAT days vs nothing? How about just about every Article in our contract being inferior?
Your spins are being slowed down by the facts Overspeed. Give it up, admit that this is worst contract to be working under in the industry, that there needs to be changes in the way the TWU does things and the results they get for mechanics or the mechanics will have no option other than getting rid of the TWU. Take the first of the twelve steps away from your addiction to lies.
