For our Ramp Brothers and Sisters:
February 23, 2003
Response from Randy Canale to Doug McKeen
Doug McKeen
Vice President Labor Relations
US Airways
2345 Crystal Dr.
Arlington, VA. 22227
Dear Mr. McKeen:
This is in response to your e-mail request to meet with District Lodge 141 on Thursday, February 26, 2004 at USA Headquarters, and our telephone discussion of February 20, 2004.
We have declined to respond to the Company’s directive (I use their term because the date and time were arbitrarily established by the Company and not by mutual agreement) as we can see no purpose being served.
We do not share the root cause of the Company’s continued struggles, and it has been made abundantly clear by the Officers of the Company you do not share our views. Our members have made a huge investment in their Airline, both in sweat equity and wage investments, ($240 million per year, for six years by the IAM).
We have seen our efforts/investments squandered by poor management of the Carrier. Starting at the top with CEO Seigel and working its way down to the front line supervisors.
District 141 on a number of occasions has initiated meetings with Corporate Officers, Management and a member of the Board of Directors (not the IAM member of the Board.) We have also held joint meetings with District 141-M of the IAM and Corporate Management. The purpose of those meetings was to provide the Company with millions of dollars in savings just by improvements in the operation of the Airline. These meetings have been to no avail with the Company. No interest was expressed by the Company and the response has been to declare war on the very heart of the “franchiseâ€, its employees.
Our members have seen their once proud Airline run into the ground (operationally and Customer service wise) by a total inept level of management, not seen since People’s Express/Eastern Airlines and we know what happened to those Airlines. This is only underscored by an example experienced by our members in Philadelphia. USA passengers chanting, Southwest! Southwest! Southwest!, as they wait and wait for their bags to arrive, due in no way to Fleet Service, I might add. If staffing levels were appropriate, these types of problems would not exist.
Our members are frustrated by poor management of the airline operation, disillusioned/ dismayed by a management that doesn’t respond to real help and savings, angered by a waste of their money and being targeted as the problem.
You can whine about low-cost competition, but Southwest is the most union organized domestic airline (including the highest wages), but what you refuse to see or acknowledge is a superior management and operation, achieved with their employees.
This management has been given the tools and opportunity, and has failed miserably, and ignores/refuses help from its own employees.
We have no intention of giving this Management anymore than valuable advice. With the current Corporate Officers, our members could pay to work at the carrier, and this Management would find a way to lose.
We could turn this “franchise†around, both in profitability and operationally if there was a sincere effort to commit together.
When there is a management in place to do so, we will be first in line to make it happen.
Sincerely,
S.R. (Randy) Canale
President & Directing General Chairperson
District 141