Outsourcing at AA

[Overspeed]

So you want to rehash all the concessions in that piece of trash again.
Still saying you're a D term mech?
You're about as truthful as a .......TWU int'l rep.

No kicking it at the hangar utility now

 

[NYer]

There you go again.
Lets look at the facts of the rejected 2010 TA.
It was in the companys words a "Cost neutral" offer. In other words any gains in one area were offset by concessions elsewhere.
The only people who would have received pay comparable to UA/CO would be those line mechanics working within a narrow timeframe. All the company had to do was change the start times outside the window, which was narrow enough where they could still have 24 hour coverage and at best line A&Ps working nights would have been at least $1/hr less than them. The deal would have left our Overhaul A&Ps at around $4/hr less than their peers at UA/CO.

In my 30+ years in this industry Negotiations have pretty much followed the same path. If after NMB mediation a TA is rejected the Union immediately asks to be released and negotiations commence under a 30 day clock, after 30 days the President can form a PEB which will look into the dispute and render a recommendation based on what the industry pays, not on what the company claims they can pay.

"What you're asking me in part is a political question," said Fordham University finance professor Frank Werner. "My guess is that the National Mediation Board is not going to be very excited about allowing a 30-day cooling period." Werner said labor perceives a Democratic administration as more friendly to labor issues. But the NMB is mediating dozens of airline negotiations right now, and that large number presents a difficult issue for the agency, he said. "If you allow certain strikes, which ones do you allow, and what do you say to the other people?" he said. Werner and industry consultant Jerry Glass said the NMB will have to consider the fragile state of the economy. "I think the NMB is going to err on the side of not allowing strikes," Werner said. Glass said he thinks some airlines have reached the point of "too big to strike." --Dallas News, April 2010

When we rejected the TA we had already taken a strike vote, the International had everything they needed to progress to the next step, but they chose not to. Instead of demanding a release in August of 2010 there was silence. Complete silence.

"The Association of Professional Flight Attendants first asked the National Mediation Board for a release in March. The union is still waiting for an answer. "We haven't been told no, and we haven't been told yes," Glading said. Even so, "I don't believe we'll be iced," Glading said. "I don't believe we'll be recessed. I believe the NMB recognizes that we've done everything we can do to achieve a deal, and it is time for release. I'm hopeful that will happen early next year." --Dallas News, November 2010

"Last month, both the TWU and APFA asked the NMB to release them for a 30-day "cooling-off" period that could lead to a strike against American.. Larry Gibbons, director of NMB's office of mediation services, told TWU officials Wednesday that the board will reconvene mediated negotiations."--Tulsa World, April 2010

"American Airlines’ mechanics gave union leaders authority to call a strike at the second-largest U.S. carrier as their labor group rejected a three-year contract that would have boosted members’ pay...The defeat extends labor tension at AMR Corp.’s American, where flight attendants and ramp workers are asking the National Mediation Board to be released from further negotiations and allowed to walk out." --Bloomberg, Aug 2010

They called together the negotiating committee several months later, and asked the NMB to set up more meetings. We didn't meet with the company till December, four months after rejecting the TA. Had we progressed to release and pretty much a sure thing-PEB the PEB would likely have given us their recommendation by October of 2010.

"American and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants haven't had a negotiating session since May 21, when a week of talks overseen by the National Mediation Board ended without a deal. Mechanics and related employees represented by the Transport Workers Union turned down a proposed contract in late August, as did a smaller TWU unit. There have been no talks since.
• A mediation board official told American and the Allied Pilots Association that they'd made so little progress after four years of negotiations that the agency's mediators won't schedule any more meetings with them until 2011." --Dallas News, November 2010

"The Allied Pilots Association and management have continued negotiations and have made considerable progress, even though they’ve had no federally mediated sessions since October [2010]...The Association of Professional Flight Attendants had its last mediated session with American management in January [2011]. --Dallas News, August 2011

 

[Bob Owens]

"American and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants haven't had a negotiating session since May 21, when a week of talks overseen by the National Mediation Board ended without a deal. Mechanics and related employees represented by the Transport Workers Union turned down a proposed contract in late August, as did a smaller TWU unit. There have been no talks since.
• A mediation board official told American and the Allied Pilots Association that they'd made so little progress after four years of negotiations that the agency's mediators won't schedule any more meetings with them until 2011." --Dallas News, November 2010

"The Allied Pilots Association and management have continued negotiations and have made considerable progress, even though they’ve had no federally mediated sessions since October [2010]...The Association of Professional Flight Attendants had its last mediated session with American management in January [2011]. --Dallas News, August 2011

And if mechanics were in the same position as Pilots and Flight attendants or even FSC compared to their peers in the industry then I could accept the deliberate delay. If any of those groups had ended up in a PEB they probably would not gain anything since their standing amongst their peers was pretty good, even after exiting BK their standing amongst their peers remained better than mechanics going in to BK who were far behind most of their peers in the industry.

 

[comatose]

No kicking it at the hangar utility now

Once full of crap, always full of crap.

 

[NYer]

And if mechanics were in the same position as Pilots and Flight attendants or even FSC compared to their peers in the industry then I could accept the deliberate delay. If any of those groups had ended up in a PEB they probably would not gain anything since their standing amongst their peers was pretty good, even after exiting BK their standing amongst their peers remained better than mechanics going in to BK who were far behind most of their peers in the industry.

It also helps to remain in the back of the bus if everyone is unwilling to move up a seat at a time instead of making a dash to the front. Since 2008, the goal for some has been to go right to the top instead of working their way their in increments. It is much easier to complain about not getting anything and turning down opportunities in 2008 and 2010. Two instances where incremental increases could have brought the goal being on top much closer. The choice taken was to go from your professed bottom of the industry to the top of the industry in a bankruptcy, and before that in a PEB (of which there have THREE in the airline industry since 1983). The other groups are not at the bottom because they have made incremental advances which have prevented a free fall. But go ahead, with your usual blame of others.

 

[scorpion 2]

Hey, you could have voted yes on the 2010 TA and had a raise to UA/CO 2012 wages in 2010. The MCT's voted their 2010 TA in and still kept their industry leading wages even after BK. Yep, the TWU is so awful trying to force $38 and hour down your throat and keeping all but 10% of the work in-house. They should have given in to an awesome IBT deal like at UA/CO in 2012 and dropped all outsourcing caps for $38 an hour. Teamster power? NOT!

Thanks for reminding me of another weird ass contract pitched by the twu. If you would have put every mechanic through a filtering process to see who would get that hourly wage there may have been a dozen mechanics who would have seen it. Not one amt in Tulsa would have gotten it. There would still be the same half dozen koolaid drinking baffoons standing on Mingo rd holding signs bragging about the pay, even though not one of them would see it on their check. What I couldn't understand is why they didn't go ahead and put us in 1st place in pay since it was just a few who would see it just so they could have bragging rights to sell the pos.. You didn't mention the part about loosing my retiree medical cause I was only 49. 25 years seniority and loosing my med but a guy with 15 years and 51 years of age keeping his! I guess you forgot about the earth shattering T shirt the twu put out years back that stated (an injustice to one is an injustice to all). And what about the weird scope language that no one understood. Keep posting I sometimes forget about all the mind bending crap that has come out of the twu over the years!!!! Thanks bro

 

[Bob Owens]

and before that in a PEB (of which there have THREE in the airline industry since 1983).

And all three have occurred since 1997. (Mr Richard left that out of the notes he sent you didn't he.) As the industry consolidates, PEBs in this industry, which had never occurred prior to 1997, will be as common as they are in the Rails. When carriers believe they are in a position to gain concessions workers will be allowed to Strike, when they know they cant sustain a strike they will be directed to a PEB, the more consolidated the industry becomes, and the larger the carrier gets, the less likely it is that they will be able to defeat a strike conducted by workers whose skillsets are limited, workers such as pilots and mechanics. Yes I know, NWA beat AMFA, well 9-11 and the recession created the right conditions for that, those conditions no longer exist, neither does NWA which never made it back to their pre-strike levels before being acquired by Delta. Look at who the PEBs were issued against, IIRC APA, AMFA and ALPA. All against licensed airmen at large carriers. Smaller carriers have been allowed to strike since then but its very doubtful that the President will allow any carrier that carries a double digit percentage of the entire industry 's traffic to go on strike. If seemingly endless delays don't break the workers they will end up in a PEB, just like the rails. Pilots and mechanics are becoming scarcer by the day, that could be good news for you-makes it more likely they will pay for unlicensed workers to get their A&P through tuition reimbursement program. You speak of incremental steps and falsely claim that other groups have taken this approach at AA, the fact is none of those other groups were at the bottom, and with 6 year contracts what you are saying is we should be willing to go for many decades continually at either the bottom or next to bottom and hope that when we do get increases that our peers end up with people like Gless and Videtich running their contracts so we may have a chance of actually making it up in rank amongst our peers.

 

[Overspeed]

Thanks for reminding me of another weird ass contract pitched by the twu. If you would have put every mechanic through a filtering process to see who would get that hourly wage there may have been a dozen mechanics who would have seen it. Not one amt in Tulsa would have gotten it. There would still be the same half dozen koolaid drinking baffoons standing on Mingo rd holding signs bragging about the pay, even though not one of them would see it on their check. What I couldn't understand is why they didn't go ahead and put us in 1st place in pay since it was just a few who would see it just so they could have bragging rights to sell the pos.. You didn't mention the part about loosing my retiree medical cause I was only 49. 25 years seniority and loosing my med but a guy with 15 years and 51 years of age keeping his! I guess you forgot about the earth shattering T shirt the twu put out years back that stated (an injustice to one is an injustice to all). And what about the weird scope language that no one understood. Keep posting I sometimes forget about all the mind bending crap that has come out of the twu over the years!!!! Thanks bro

You didn't read the TA obviously.

There was no filtering process. The line got a $2.55 premium which would have helped the higher cost of living stations. Now you still have $0.55.

You didn't lose retire medical. The funding option changed for those under 50. Age 45 to 49 got a bridge with extra SK time added to your bank. The unused time in your SK bank would be used to pay for your retiree medical insurance. Similar to what is done at SWA.

And what do you have now? No $2.55 line premium and no retiree medical for all. Your welcome bro. Thanks for reading the TA and voting no because it was going to get so much better.

 

[Bob Owens]

You didn't lose retire medical. The funding option changed for those under 50. Age 45 to 49 got a bridge with extra SK time added to your bank. The unused time in your SK bank would be used to pay for your retiree medical insurance. Similar to what is done at SWA.

"The funding option changed". You left a lot out. Similar to SWA? really? In what way, that both used sick time? Lets see at SWA IIRC they get 12 sick days per year and the company was going to charge 10 hours per month to pay for retiree medical, at AA not only would we would have had to turn over all of our prefunding monies but we would have had to pay 20 hours per month for the coverage, and for the last 10 years we only got 5 sick days per year to bank, prior to that we only got 10. So in other words the AA retiree medical was around four times more expensive, not counting the prefunding monies we had to give up, as the SWA plan. IIRC in order for a worker at AA to accumulate enough sick time at AA to cover retiree medical from 55 to 65 he would need nearly 40 years of perfect attendance but for a mechanic at SWA all he needed was around 10. So since it was nearly impossible to accumulate enough sick time to pay for retiree medical from 55 saying that we lost it under the "changed funding plan" is a fair statement. Once again, speaking like management you say that those aged 45 to 49 got a bridge with sick time added to their bank but that wasn't added, we could only use those "hours" for retiree medical and it was paid for with our prefunding monies and even at that it wasn't enough on average to provide enough sick days to pay for coverage from 55. The company claimed that on average a mechanic uses 5.1 sick days days per year, so using that number, on average they accumulated zero sick time since 2003 (Actually they would be down two days) and would have accumulated only 4.9 days/year prior to 2003. So if they were 49 and started at 25 years of age they would only have 572 hours, at 5 days per year they would not accumulate any sick time after 2003, so at age 55 they would be able to buy less than two and a half years of coverage while the guy at SWA with identical time and attendance could call in sick 12 days a year for the rest of his career and would still have more than enough to pay for ten years of coverage, so the plan was nothing like what SWA (or CO) was offering. AA was charging us twice as many hours for the coverage while paying us less than half as many hours. Keep up the good work, the deeper we look into the details of the 2010 TA the more we remember why we rejected the ZERO COST contract. Yes some would have seen raises, paid for with other concessions but those in OH ended up pretty much exactly where they are now. The $38 an hour only applied to those working midnights on the line if the company chose to have their start time within a window that was narrower than a shift. So in other words its very likely that only on paper would top pay have been that high, nobody would actually be getting that. Still doesn't explain why Don and Little didn't ask for a release after the members rejected the TA.

 

[Bob Owens]

You didn't read the TA obviously.

There was no filtering process. The line got a $2.55 premium which would have helped the higher cost of living stations. Now you still have $0.55.

IIRC the objection that Tulsa had to the Line Premium wasn't that it would help those in high cost areas, it was that those working the line in Tulsa, a low cost area would get it. Both Luis and Cirri supported GEO pay but Videtich did not support it and obviously in high level negotiations it was not brought forward. Title II, even those in the High Cost areas were also excluded from the line premium. It was put in there as a divide and conquer tactic not to address those in high cost areas. The fact is that the GEO premiums as proposed, which would have included Title II offered a far less costly avenue to start addressing the issue with high cost areas. Its odd that you should keep bringing this up, we stood together, Line, Base and Title II and voted down a contract where the Base and Title II would have been left out in the cold way behind the rest of the industry, even further behind those on the line, we did the right thing, the Union thing, its unfortunate that the majority of our brothers and sisters in Tulsa and Title II were panicked by so called Unionists such as yourself into driving all our careers over the cliff.

 

[JABORD]

It also helps to remain in the back of the bus if everyone is unwilling to move up a seat at a time instead of making a dash to the front. Since 2008, the goal for some has been to go right to the top instead of working their way their in increments. It is much easier to complain about not getting anything and turning down opportunities in 2008 and 2010. Two instances where incremental increases could have brought the goal being on top much closer. The choice taken was to go from your professed bottom of the industry to the top of the industry in a bankruptcy, and before that in a PEB (of which there have THREE in the airline industry since 1983). The other groups are not at the bottom because they have made incremental advances which have prevented a free fall. But go ahead, with your usual blame of others.

I would like to believe that your in a minority. "Opportunities"? Really? You don't really think much of yourself as an Aircraft Mechanic, do you? Why is it Ok for the company to try and convince the public AA is the Airline of choice yet we don't deserve market rate or better for our trade? It didn't take a rocket scientist to see the devil was in the details with those pos ta's. Advocates in favor of raising the integrety for our Craft really have their work cut out with folks like yourself.

 

[scorpion 2]

You didn't read the TA obviously.

There was no filtering process. The line got a $2.55 premium which would have helped the higher cost of living stations. Now you still have $0.55.

You didn't lose retire medical. The funding option changed for those under 50. Age 45 to 49 got a bridge with extra SK time added to your bank. The unused time in your SK bank would be used to pay for your retiree medical insurance. Similar to what is done at SWA.

And what do you have now? No $2.55 line premium and no retiree medical for all. Your welcome bro. Thanks for reading the TA and voting no because it was going to get so much better.

Sorry to go over your head with my analogy but considering where you worked and your hours of work there were certain criteria that had to be met in order to get your so called top hourly rate. Hence the filtering process! If you want to add the same filtering analogy to the retiree med (bridge formula) proposal than that was the same thing. Some people played sports or had active life styles and may have had knee surgeries or what ever and used more sick leave than others. What good is a bridge if no sick time is there to bridge? I work with a guy that was 44 and had 23 years with the company so he didn't even get a rickety bridge he just got the big ass ravine to look across to at his retiree med. You obviously were not going to have to live with this mess and are working under a different set of rules than us. We pay your salary and your supposed to work for us but we have no control or say when it comes to over site on pay, benefits or who even holds the international positions. Come on bro and come clean with the brotherhood your an international puke aren't you?

 

[NYer]

And all three have occurred since 1997. (Mr Richard left that out of the notes he sent you didn't he.) As the industry consolidates, PEBs in this industry, which had never occurred prior to 1997, will be as common as they are in the Rails.

Actually prior to 1997 there were approximately 47 PEB's in the airline industry. Consolidation is not the trigger for future "common" occurrences of PEB's in the airline industry. The action that completely brought the airline PEB's to halt was deregulation. If anything, consolidation will make it even more difficult to obtain a 30-day cooling off period and subsequently, a PEB since a strike by any of the major airlines would have a dramatic effect to the economy which is the main consideration in such cases....Not maintaining "industry standards."

When carriers believe they are in a position to gain concessions workers will be allowed to Strike, when they know they cant sustain a strike they will be directed to a PEB, the more consolidated the industry becomes, and the larger the carrier gets, the less likely it is that they will be able to defeat a strike conducted by workers whose skillsets are limited, workers such as pilots and mechanics. Yes I know, NWA beat AMFA, well 9-11 and the recession created the right conditions for that, those conditions no longer exist, neither does NWA which never made it back to their pre-strike levels before being acquired by Delta. Look at who the PEBs were issued against, IIRC APA, AMFA and ALPA. All against licensed airmen at large carriers. Smaller carriers have been allowed to strike since then but its very doubtful that the President will allow any carrier that carries a double digit percentage of the entire industry 's traffic to go on strike. If seemingly endless delays don't break the workers they will end up in a PEB, just like the rails.

If the last 10 years of unprecedented concessions, bankruptcies isn't proof that there will likely never again be a PEB for a major airline, then it is an unfortunate case of misguided rhetoric. EVERY major airline, and EVERY airline union has gone through a BK process and 10 years of industry negotiations with not even a hint of a PEB even being possible. In these conditions, it didn't happen. It will never again. And I don't think, because you said so, is a good enough argument to prove the contrary.

Pilots and mechanics are becoming scarcer by the day, that could be good news for you-makes it more likely they will pay for unlicensed workers to get their A&P through tuition reimbursement program. You speak of incremental steps and falsely claim that other groups have taken this approach at AA, the fact is none of those other groups were at the bottom, and with 6 year contracts what you are saying is we should be willing to go for many decades continually at either the bottom or next to bottom and hope that when we do get increases that our peers end up with people like Gless and Videtich running their contracts so we may have a chance of actually making it up in rank amongst our peers.

Other groups weren't at the bottom because they haven't fought a 12 year battle to try and get back to the 2001 contract in one swoop, and continually and consistently keep either voting no or not even bringing a TA for a vote. Other groups made incremental steps forward.

"Slow progress is better than no progress"

 

[scorpion 2]

Most didn't care if they got back everything in one contract. MOST were just not wanting to not go back any further. Giving up retiree med no matter what else happened was a concession...................................

 

[Overspeed]

Sorry to go over your head with my analogy but considering where you worked and your hours of work there were certain criteria that had to be met in order to get your so called top hourly rate. Hence the filtering process! If you want to add the same filtering analogy to the retiree med (bridge formula) proposal than that was the same thing. Some people played sports or had active life styles and may have had knee surgeries or what ever and used more sick leave than others. What good is a bridge if no sick time is there to bridge? I work with a guy that was 44 and had 23 years with the company so he didn't even get a rickety bridge he just got the big ass ravine to look across to at his retiree med. You obviously were not going to have to live with this mess and are working under a different set of rules than us. We pay your salary and your supposed to work for us but we have no control or say when it comes to over site on pay, benefits or who even holds the international positions. Come on bro and come clean with the brotherhood your an international puke aren't you?

Nice try at a recovery. The line premium was $2.55, the MRT was $1.50 (up from $0.50). People who worked midnights would be getting the full top pay which is where a majority of line maintenance is performed and therefore a majority of the mechanics. Again, no filtering process.

There was a rapid recovery formula for people who suffered catastrophic SK occurence. The bridge would provide those from age 45 to 49. Not many of us our fortunate enough to retiree at 50. Again, you didn't ask questions of your local withheld relevant information.

Uh I was not 50 at the time and I still want retiree medical. We would have had it still had we approved the 2010 TA.

Thanks for flying AA and buying full fare ticket. All of us gainfully employed mechanics at AA appreciate the fact you are buying tickets so we can all get a paycheck.