Now that is the most dead on statement I have heard yet. Bob and the cast of clowns asking for release without prepping the membership for being replaced, stockpiling cash, how to handle their mortgage payments, telling their family they don't have any income, pulling the kids out of college, cars repo'd, etc...is the biggest single issue going forward.
How many will cross? How many former TWA RIF employees will step up? Can AA pull off a NWA-esque line maintenance scheme with maybe Class Is? Who knows?
Bob knows though so I am calm and cool. He has also said we have other levers to pull beside strike but then doesn't AA?
One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. - RFK
Those are the risks you take when you choose to belong and behave like a unionist. If you dont like it or are not prepared to take on the company then you should either go non-union or into management and just accept whatever they feel like giving to you. That seems to be the well worn path many of your pseudo-unionist predecessors have followed, you can join up with Mark Easton and Mark Nelson on the other side, where you belong.
Many of the downside things you mention are already happening to many of our members.
The fact is that we could give AA everything they ask for and AA could still possibly liquidate anyway, and the investment of working all those years on the cheap is gone. The only thing we have to gain by working cheaply, and thats not guaranteed, is that we get to continue to work on the cheap. There is no security in concessions. If we do not get what we need to get now things will never get better. AA is set to bring in $24billion this year. They just ordered over 400 more new aiplanes this past Summer. Every breakroom I see has new furniture, many of the terminals are either new or being remodeled, they are replacing the cabins and modifying the older aircraft and of couse they never miss an incentive payment to management.
Northwest was only a fraction of the size of AA. Yet they still could not get enough mechanics to maintain their full operation and this was only a short time after most carriers laid off thousands of mechanics. The larger the workforce the harder it is to replace it. If AA was preparing for this we would have heard about it, this is a small industry. We even heard little things like how the company was sending management Instructors to Arizona to do the Gen fam class and soliciting retirees from QA to go to TIMCO. If they were amassing a few thousand mechanics we would have heard about it, secondly, with Boeing having made all these committments they will be hiring from the same pool of mechanics that AA would be hiring from. Given the choice of becoming a scab for AA with less benifits and lower pay or working for Boeing where do you think most would go? Another thing, the FAA. Over the last five years the FAA has stepped up its oversight, AA has struggled to remain compliant, the company told the Presidents Council that the company Certificate was at stake. Could you imaging the impact to the operation if they tried to bring in thousands of mechanics who were unfamilair with our equipment and proceedures? The fact is there arent too many out there that have experience on what we have, most of the guys off the street are from Eagle, they may be fine mechanics but it will take time, just as it did for us, to become familair. Years ago they would have been hired as Junior Mechanics without Heavy Turbine Experience.
Has anyone flown anywhere lately? I have, nearly every week. Now this is the slow time of the year, kids back in school and the Holidays coming up. The Terrorists picked this time of year because of the low load factors, between the four aircraft there were only around 240 passengers, so the planes were less than half full. Every plane I get on is nearly or completely full. So in other words there isnt much excess capacity in the system anymore, compared to 2001 where nearly 70% of the seats were empty on 9-11. So if there was a time when the system could not absorb a strike of its third largest carrier, when there are fewer carriers than ever before, its now.
So go ahead keep spreading fear, the thing is that if we follow you all those bad things you say will happen if we fight back will happen if we dont. Members are already losing their homes, pulling their kids out of college, having cars repo'd, thats what a great job our union has done for them!
