Laura Glading is an unsung hero

[bigjets]

Their pay today in real terms isn't much better now than it was then, they didn't  pass us, we fell below them. For you to not realize that is more than unsettling, its sad. 
 
I say that the wage at SWA is fair, not good, but fair considering the rest of the industry. The compensation at UPS is good, not great but good, its about what we used to get in real terms.

So $45 an hour is not good. It's much better to have what you got us $36..oh wait that's someone else's fault. You said we should get $55 but the other presidents so NO we want $36.

LG non confrontational style allowed her to call up DP and get an additional 4% in pay raises, the know nothing's said we don't want that, we want an arbitrator to decide my future with guaranteed less money, the bob approved way.

It's much better to have your style of fantasy land type negotiating, belittling AA executives and your fellow TWU negotiators. Well at least your political base thinks you're righteous.

 

[NYer]

That comment puts you at the same level as those who post about Laura Gladding being related to people in management and going to management weddings and stuff. 
 
Business publications praising Union leaders isn't exactly very comforting. 
 
 
I think overall Laura did a good job steering the APFA through BK. You make your decisions based on the info available at the time, and past experience. Signing a deal to go into binding arbitration probably seemed reasonable at the time, especially after having recently going through four years of negotiations only to see AA jump into BK with $5 billion in cash.  -- There were two choices. Go with a standalone AA or go with a merger and agree with the Creditors who wanted cost certainties as the Plan of Reorganization would have given them. In that situation, it would be foolish to walk away.
 
The decision to support the merger at any cost was probably driven more by emotion than logic, and since the APFA is a democratic Union it cant all be pinned on her, unlike the TWU where Little made the call without any input from those elected by the members. --It makes more logical sense to have a merger within BK, than to deal with such a situation after the BK and especially when it would have meant the unions at AA would have to swallow the 20% cuts, rather than the 17% cuts.
 
Save the company from what? They had shed $10 billion in debt, had $5 billion in cash and secured financing for over 500 new planes. --Thankfully they had cash on hand when they filed. Unlike yourself, I'd rather see them go into BK with a cushion rather than needing to find financing to pay their bills within the BK process. When a company has to file and get Debtor In Possession (DIP) financing the lender dictates the First Day Orders which usually comes with immediate pay and benefit cuts. You option would be that they burn through that cash then file for BK and have the need for DIP, ridiculous.
 
Since mergers typically mean fewer competitors and higher profits , but fewer potential employers for workers, if a Union is to support a merger it makes no sense at all to support a merger without ensuring that some of the gains from the mergers reach the members. --The gains are reaching the Members. There were less cuts in BK, there were raises from US Airways and there is another opportunity to gain in another JCBA. To have merger after the BK would mean we didn't get the raises from US Airways, we would be saddled with bigger cuts than we took in BK, the airline would have to take on more debt in order to finance a merger. Once the merger happens, if it happens, the extra debt load would certainly curtail any possible gains we could make otherwise.
 
As an outsider where I think she screwed up, and due to the structure of the APFA it's not really fair to pin it all on her, is agreeing to a five year deal and locking themselves into what comes out to around 3% increases over the entire term of the deal with concessions that will mean in real terms her members will be earning less at the end of this deal than they are now (pursers and those with premiums would be making more but the majority would be worse off) .  -- The duration of the CBA is not going to be negotiable. Again, it was a requirement of the creditors committee to ensure the POR would be for the allotted time giving them a change to make the biggest gains possible. To be mired in contract negotiations for years, like UA, was not welcoming. As it stands, with the merger Glading was able to lower the total percentage of ask for Members while at the same time opening the possibility of making more gains well before the 6 year mark of the POR.
 
Laura knew, or at least the info was available to her,  that in court AA as a stand alone carrier with even more competitors in the Industry was claiming they would be making nearly $3 billion a year in profits. She probably didn't believe them, once again, fair enough. The difference is that these numbers were being put before the court and the creditors, not vendors(which we as workers are) in a negotiation over contract terms. For some reason when Parker used those same numbers it was more believable and she endorsed the merger. With the merger come not only internal synergies, but industry consolidation which generally means even higher profits. Yet despite all that the APFA negotiating team agreed to what is a one time boost now, which is less than what they gave up in a one time cut in 2003 with much much smaller increases the remainder of the contract, with no means to recover whats been lost over the last 15 years no matter how many billions in profits AA pulls down, they agreed to extend the deal suffered under BK for an extra year with a company that right out of the box is earning record profits. -- And there is the fall back. 2003. When all else fails let use 2003 as a mechanism to try and make a point of where we are today. Tried and failed mantra of 2008, "Restore and More." A flight attendant group that has been out of BK for less than a year had raises in the failed contract that would have brought them to industry leading or close to it. After 11 years of no raises, no movement forward it takes a special person to point out that the movement forward is nothing more than a mirage. It is better to stay where we are and fight, even if that fight is take years. Let's no grow organically, no, let's try to force the issue and if we wait long enough we will succeed....Except, that blueprint has not worked. It was tried in 2008 and failed, all other proposals after that were worse than the originally. Actually, it was a three year deal, but after saying no...we were still fighting three years later. Then came the BK. At that point, you believed a liquidation was the way to go. =/
 
 
Can anyone here claim that the majority of Flight Attendants in 2019 would be as well off in real terms under the rejected TA as the majority of Flight attendants were in 2002, even half way there? -- That's the goal then. Nothing is good enough until we reach the levels prior to 2003 in one contract negotiations. If we can't get it one contract negotiations then we need to hold out even if it means we go to a Presidential Emergency Board in 2018 and force the President and Congress to deal with us or we will strike and shut down the entire transportation system of the United States.
 
AA will be, in fact they will likely be better off than they ever were, so will their upper management. --They already are.
 
 
The article left out a few major points.
 
AA was not in bad shape when they went into BK, they were already poised to show profits and had drastically lowered their debt, had secured funding for over 500 new aircraft which would lower their fuel and maintenance costs. They went into BK for one reason, they could not get their pilots to agree to concessions. So they screwed us all, don't blame the pilots though, they were right to not give concessions and they were right to get 15% of the Equity. -- No, don't blame the pilots. They did us a favor by forcing a BK which led to us to giving up 17% of our CBA. It was for a good cause. Now we have them exactly where we want them.(?) The airline wasn't in bad shape, the debt was made up or they were hiding the real numbers. (If you believe that is true then you can't want to force profit sharing as part of a deal because we know they "make believe" they have money problems....amazing how your arguments intersect each other).....................Ridiculous!
 
AA never claimed that they were in imminent financial danger, they spoke of long term problems securing Capital that may or may not have ever materialized(keep in mind they were claiming this six months after securing finance for the largest order of new aircraft ever, and after posting losses or minimal profits in the 9 years preceding the deal. 
 
AA had  $5 billion in cash when they filed. ..And $29B in debt. (minor detail, I guess)
 
AA made their creditors 100% whole in BK, many of those creditors have been made way beyond 100%. If they were in such bad shape then creditors would not have been made whole. In 'real? bankruptcy cases creditors only get pennies on the dollar, that only applied to workers at AA. Our Corporate Media never looks too closely at the facts, and a Business publication would be even further to the right than the rest of Corporate media. --I guess the fact that the added value of a merger helped all creditors make bigger gains than they would otherwise would normally make, is another fact that is not closely scrutinized.
 
....But luckily, we have Bob to get us on the right track because corporate media, business publications, union leadership, financial advisers, court officers and anyone else that goes against how the world works according to Bob, must be suspect.

 

[NYer]

I did say most of that. Why didn't we get it? Because guys like you keep voting YES then say they don't want a Union. Unfortunately there were more guys at the table like you than me and the people who were in charge were exactly like you. 

 
You see bigjets, the problem according to Bob is the majority of the Members that vote yes, the leadership of the TWU and most other unions, corporate mouthpieces, publications in DFW and TUL, other elected TWU Officers, the bankruptcy court, the judge in the bankruptcy court, the National Mediation Board and several of their Mediators, the TWU financial advisers, third party financial advisers hired by the TWU, the TWU's own council, the BK lawyers hired by the TWU, labor lawyers hired by the TWU, most Members in other title groups (since he believed a liquidation was better than accepting a BK deal), TWU public relations personnel.....I'm sure there are others.
 
All we need bigjets, is to say no. Just say no. It doesn't matter that we said no in 2008 and by 2011 we were still waiting, The APA said no in BK and they were abrogated and came back with the same 17% cuts. The APFA said no and they got a JCBA with $81M less in value. But don't fret. It will work for us. Heck, even the mechanics at NW said no and went on strike. I guess it's a moral victory....right? Point is. History doesn't matter when it fails, but it's very important if it was successful. (regardless of whether it was a few decades ago)

 

[bigjets]

It's nice to see that bob's BS, is seen for what it is by more then just me.

 

[Bob Owens]

 
 
--It makes more logical sense to have a merger within BK, than to deal with such a situation after the BK and especially when it would have meant the unions at AA would have to swallow the 20% cuts, rather than the 17% cuts.
 
 
 
 

 
 
Well first of all the reduction from 20% to 17% was due to the PBGC saying they were going to fight allowing AA to dump the pension and if they did then the PBGC was pretty much going to take all the equity and the other creditors would not have made out like bandits. The PBGC threatened to blow up the whole charade. Mark Richards told us the 20% was not negotiable, but then it went from 20% to 17% but the fact is the PBGC did negotiate their way out of the whole scam completely, and as a result the company dropped the ask by 3%. So the PBGC negotiated what our lawyers said could not be negotiated. 
 
 
 

The gains are reaching the Members. There were less cuts in BK, there were raises from US Airways and there is another opportunity to gain in another JCBA. To have merger after the BK would mean we didn't get the raises from US Airways, we would be saddled with bigger cuts than we took in BK, the airline would have to take on more debt in order to finance a merger. Once the merger happens, if it happens, the extra debt load would certainly curtail any possible gains we could make otherwise.

 
We gave up six years of profit sharing for a 4% increase that we would have received with the mid term wage adjustment anyway. So we got an extra total of around $3000 in exchange for 6 years of profit sharing. How much profit sharing would we see on the $5 billion this year plus the $6.8 billion next year, with four more after that? More lies and spin. "YOU WONT HAVE A CONTRACT!!! YOU WILL BE AT WILL EMPLOYEES!!!! YOU WILL NOT HAVE CHECK OFF!!!!!   
 
 
  

No, don't blame the pilots. They did us a favor by forcing a BK which led to us to giving up 17% of our CBA. It was for a good cause. Now we have them exactly where we want them.(?) The airline wasn't in bad shape, the debt was made up or they were hiding the real numbers.

 
Did the pilots force us to jerk around for over a year after the members rejected the TA? When has a union not sought to be released after rejecting a TA? If we pushed the issue we could have had a contract way before BK that was not ZERO cost. We could have had a contract that brought us to the same level with our peers as the Pilots, Flight Attendants, Fleet service and pretty much every other group had going in. Pilots didn’t force BK, greedy executives saw an opportunity to fleece their workers.  So typical of you to blame other workers instead of the company. No I don't blame the pilots, their contract was way ahead of most of their peers and they did the right thing to kick the can down the road, just like Samuelson did with Local 100. If you are already at the top and the company isn't posting big profits you don't really have anywhere to rush off to, that went for pretty much everyone at AA except the mechanics, we were the only group that went into BK at the very bottom of the industry.  Stick to the jokes. You are only bad at that, not terrible. 
 

[SIZE=12pt]And $29B in debt.[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt] [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt](minor detail, I guess)[/SIZE]   
 

 Actually yea, how much debt does AA say they eliminated and how much do they say they have now? 
 

[SIZE=12pt]I guess the fact that the added value of a merger helped all creditors make bigger gains than they would otherwise would normally make, is another fact that is not closely scrutinized.[/SIZE]    

Its a fact that the Unions should have considered because in order to make them all much richer we still ended up with losses, losses that went directly into their pockets. Normally creditors, all creditors lose in BK, in this one only the workers lost, then on top of that we had people like Jim Little, in concert with the likes of Mark Richard and John Donnelly have us give away 6 or more years of profit sharing for a 4% advance of a raise we would see a few months later anyway.  
 
 
I thought this thread was supposed to be about Laura Gladding? 

 

[Bob Owens]

So $45 an hour is not good. It's much better to have what you got us $36..oh wait that's someone else's fault. You said we should get $55 but the other presidents so NO we want $36.

LG non confrontational style allowed her to call up DP and get an additional 4% in pay raises, the know nothing's said we don't want that, we want an arbitrator to decide my future with guaranteed less money, the bob approved way.

It's much better to have your style of fantasy land type negotiating, belittling AA executives and your fellow TWU negotiators. Well at least your political base thinks you're righteous.

"We are all in the gutter , but some of us are looking at the stars."  Oscar Wilde
 
 
You cant see past the curb. 

 

[AA-MRO.COM]

 
You see bigjets, the problem according to Bob is the majority of the Members that vote yes, the leadership of the TWU and most other unions, corporate mouthpieces, publications in DFW and TUL, other elected TWU Officers, the bankruptcy court, the judge in the bankruptcy court, the National Mediation Board and several of their Mediators, the TWU financial advisers, third party financial advisers hired by the TWU, the TWU's own council, the BK lawyers hired by the TWU, labor lawyers hired by the TWU, most Members in other title groups (since he believed a liquidation was better than accepting a BK deal), TWU public relations personnel.....I'm sure there are others.
 
All we need bigjets, is to say no. Just say no. It doesn't matter that we said no in 2008 and by 2011 we were still waiting, The APA said no in BK and they were abrogated and came back with the same 17% cuts. The APFA said no and they got a JCBA with $81M less in value. But don't fret. It will work for us. Heck, even the mechanics at NW said no and went on strike. I guess it's a moral victory....right? Point is. History doesn't matter when it fails, but it's very important if it was successful. (regardless of whether it was a few decades ago)

 
You forgot to mention your YES vote put us at the bottom of the industry in pay and benefits... for the past 20 years...
Yet the APA and APFA are at the top of the industry
Keep spinning
CLUELESS

 

[bigjets]

Talked to two FAs today, the one was saying we need to fight for profit sharing, I didn't have the heart to tell her the fight has already been lost along with $82m

The other said she would rather have an arbitrator decide then take another contract from AA. She was very bitter not sure why she still works at AA, too emotional.