AAmech said:
Nice try Bob. Now Amfa wants to act reasonable. Thats NOT what they have been advertising. Amfa has been busy telling all of us here at AA that they DO NOT NEGOTIATE CONCESSIONS!! Not now or EVER! For ANY reason! Remember? What happened to "fighting this in Court"? Or "we're going to take it to the Judge"?
BTW Show me an Amfa negotiated contract that wasn't full of concessions.
Maybe you should run your facts past "Art" first.
Isnt UAL "in" Bankruptcy? And isnt this going before a judge directly if they dont come to an agreement?
The other unions can act like they are putting up a fight but we know what they will do when the push comes.
We never went BK. We gave them everything they wanted instead.
The fact is, as I'm sure "Art" told you, then again, maybe not, that the Judge considers whether the thing being sought by the company, that the union has, is "onerous". In others words imposes a disadvantage to the company. Once again the TWU comes into the picture. UAL is the second biggest airline, behind AA. The TWU agreed to have retirees prefund their retirement, giving AA a cost advantage, over 15 years ago while UAL has been providing this coverage "free of charge" for its retirees. AA has not filed for BK and enjoys the advantage of passing these costs onto TWU members thanks to the TWUs concessionary contracts. In light of the fact that AAs employees have been paying for their retiree health care for 15 years already its seems quite likely that in such a competative industry such as ours that the judge may consider this 15 years and going TWU/AA concession a neccesity for UAL.
You see, for the last twenty years the TWU has been pressuring wages across the entire industry downward. From B-scale, straight time pay for training,
Prefunding retiree health benifits, "Flex benifits" , SRPs, OSMs, Cross Utilization, Part Time, no double time, one week of vacation, five holidays, to a starting wage that is lower today than it was in
1983, the TWU has been driving down labor costs, and lowering workers living standards. There has never been a move by the opponents of working people that was as effective at ruining the lives and careers of working people than the TWU/ATD.
The lowest paid mechanic working in a capacity that entails liability as far as his A&P as of May 1, 2004 earns just $9.02 per hour! Thats lower than the minimum wage of San Francisco! This is one of the great accomplishments of the TWU. Not only is the real wage, adjusted for inflation lower but the nominal wage is lower, to the point where it is less than some locally mandated minimum wages!
The OSM basically replaced the Junior Mechanic. In 1994 the starting wage was $12.17, but now the starting wage for an OSM is $9.02. In 2008 it will only be $9.52! So in a 14 year period the TWU will have brought the lowest paid mechanics
BACKWARDS by over $2 per hour!
How about parts washers and aircraft cleaners? How has the TWU taken care of them? Lets see, starting wage in 1994=$8.76, starting wage today, ten years later $8.97! WOW, a whopping 21 cents an hour over a ten year period, a period that saw the minimum wage increase by more than that!
How about the Utility man? 1994 starting wage = $7.84, today$7.68!!!!!
You want to start talking concessions and you have to look no further than our own TWU. The suffering of others throughout this industry is without a doubt attributable to the concessionary bargaining of the TWU, one of the few unions in the country, or perhaps world, that can boast of having actually lowered wages from ones that offered a comfortable existance to the minimum wage. TWU the only union that brags that its members have to work two jobs to survive.
You want to talk about hypocrites? How about how they boast that we have to work two jobs to earn the pay of one while they work one job and collect two paychecks?!
I dont have copies of contracts going back years from other airlines, I only have TWU contracts at AA, as I'm sure you do, my request was reasonable, it was something we both have easy access to, so I'll say it again, "Show me a contract where we have not given concessions". As far as AMFA, all I know is that when I compared the Ozark contract to ours, they beat us. When I talk to ex-Branniff, they loved AMFA. I've never met an ex-TWU from Pan Am or any other carrier that liked the TWU, they all said the same thing that all the old timers here at AA said-"The TWU sucks".
I must say that you have only recently reappeared on this thread. Why is that? Have your keepers directed you to make a showing?
By the way do you know why Bobby Gless was not reported, as dictated by law, on the TWUs LM-2?
By the way, our Concessions were beyond "reasonable", if you had to live under them you would know this, even Little said that they were "more than adequate".