The claim that the TWU scope clause will drive job loss is wrong. The real driver is the new aircraft technology coming out.
When most of us talk about job losses we think of people we know losing their jobs, through layoffs. Even when we had system protection we had job losses, but the jobs that were lost were usually through attrition, people voluntarily leaving, we lost at least 3500 jobs from 2003 to 2011 even though the company had offered recall to everyone by 2011.
Nobody claimed that the Scope was "driving" job losses, instead its been said correctly that the new scope, which no longer has any system protection "will allow" the company to layoff as far as they want, which currently is capped at 35% of the spend, not 35% of the hours. 35% of spend could easily allow the company to outsource more than 50% of the hours and thus eliminate 50% or more of the workers at AA. If we had system protection still in place they could still eliminate jobs, like they did above and beyond the layoffs from 2003 to 2012 but they would have to do it through buyouts, SIS or some other incentive if attrition wasn't fast enough.
Either way, if the company wants to eliminate jobs we have never had language to prevent that and still don't.
So when you talk about how the 35% cap will be saving jobs you aren't talking about the guys who are here, it does nothing to protect most of them, you are talking about the kid who isn't even in A&P school yet, and saying that the guy who is here, who, in addition to taking pay cuts and getting the worst deal in the industry gets laid off as well, should think that this is good language because some day in the far off future AA will have to bring work back in house because they have outsourced more than 35% of the spend (or more than half the jobs), that is if the language survives the next round of negotiations which is doubtful and RR continues their partnership with AA even though AA has not opted RR for their new aircraft.
Its a shell game, we are sold system protection when the Airline is expanding, because we will not need it during the life of the agreement, so in effect its worthless but it is given a value and we are charged for it and pay for it with something tangible such as losing the first year on our pension, or flex benefits, or straight time for training, or prefunding retiree medical or having less sick time or less vacation,or B scale, if the company decides they do need to lay off you will come back and tell us to roll the date back, like in 2003, then you come and sell this 35% cap in place of system protection and act like its an industry leading deal, which it isn't, because its spend, not billable hours. This deal will allow the company to layoff as many as they want, with system protection they had to stop at 1998. The time the next negotiations start AA may be down to 6500 mechanics or so and looking to hire, not because of our scope, but for the same reason Delta will be doing the same thing, they will need to maintain their operation. I have no doubts that you will be out here trying to sell system protection again, and remove the 35% cap, of course since we will be getting system protection we will have to give some other concession in addition to the 35% cap which at that time you will admit is useless anyway, therefore has no value. These concessions will keep the average mechanic at AA at the bottom of the industry although they may adopt some sort of a premium that would go to very few people so you could come here and claim that the deal doesn't leave us at the bottom of the industry. Deals such as the limited premiums in the 2010 deal where with changes to shift start times the company could eliminate paying anyone the premium but it would still be in the book thus allowing you to come here and claim we have the best deal in the industry, only nobody actually gets that deal, what they get is the worst deal with less vacation, fewer holidays, less sick time, less IOD time and higher out of pocket medical costs and of course a lower pension based on their lower pay. Or the company could use the threat of changing the start times and eliminating the premium as a means to try and drive higher productivity, like they do now with the 4-10s.
