The Future Of BA Cabin Crew May Just Be The Future Of AA F/a's

[goodgirl37]

Thats rich coming from someone who has NEVER had to wake up look in the mirror and judge the risks and rewards and then walk a picket line. You have no idea how gut wrenching it is to not be able to go to work at the job you love.
There is no way to have 16,000 replacements ready and available. Chaos has been threatened but never proven to work. Simply forcing a small group of employees to lay it on the line is insulting. Trying to do that on a very large scale would be a disaster.
Fine at Alaska they found half a dozen people who risked it all. Were put on the same flight and struck. It made the news and thats about it. Thats all chaos has ever done for all the time AFA has threatened it.

Would a single flight walkout matter to AA? No they would roll out another crew before the passengers new what happened. They would announce through the news about the FA's trying to disrupt passengers travel plans and how they got another crew and save the day. If they tried something like larger like no JFK flying. Locked all those people out. Called in the first round of furloughs, problem solved. They are not strike breakers, they are not on strike. Buy anyone scheduled to arrive or depart JFK is or was locked out. So now APFA members have to find a way to provide a paycheck to the 1300 people who are locked out. Not only do they not have an income, they have to go on cobra there is another 600 dollar expense. How many people can afford a couple hundred dollars a month to the people who laid there jobs on the line, and for how long?

I disagree expecting a few people to bear the brunt of the risk. Too many people who are a paycheck away from disaster to walk out while others are still working risking nothing. The risk and the reward should be equally shared.

Well actually, you dont have any idea whether i have walked a picket line or not. Your assumption is i have not, but then again who is to be surprised when you turn your assumption into fact. the FACT is, AA can train your replacements - all 16,000 if they want, in less than one month and pay them a stipend to keep them on "hold" and when the whistle blows to strike, they can have the replacements ready to roll. Your not as big and bad as what you think you are. Say what you will, CHAOS worked VERY well at Alaska. You know the truth, you just cant own up to it, and actually i hope you do strike, b/c i would love to be proven wrong, L-O-L jejejejeje

 

[FA Mikey]

They couldnt get the process started in one month. Its your fantasy that they could train and keep 16,000 people on call and ready. You have zero credible information to state that as fact.

If they would actually they have to train and keep more than twice that number to have that many available. If they are not cross utilized you need thousands more. I wonder in your dreams how they get these 16,000 people to where they need to be. You are dreaming that one AA would pay 16,000 or 24.000 people some monthly income and two that AA has the money to set up, train and pay these people.

 

[Bob Owens]

Well actually, you dont have any idea whether i have walked a picket line or not. Your assumption is i have not, but then again who is to be surprised when you turn your assumption into fact. the FACT is, AA can train your replacements - all 16,000 if they want, in less than one month and pay them a stipend to keep them on "hold" and when the whistle blows to strike, they can have the replacements ready to roll. Your not as big and bad as what you think you are. Say what you will, CHAOS worked VERY well at Alaska. You know the truth, you just cant own up to it, and actually i hope you do strike, b/c i would love to be proven wrong, L-O-L jejejejeje

Fact??? Lets look at your "Facts".

AA can train your replacements - all 16,000 if they want, in less than one month

Train them all in a month? Where? AA doesnt have the facilities to train that many flight attendants. Even if they spread it out over several months like NWA did with the mechanics everyone would know about it and they havent. NWA scraped the bottom of the barrel, hiring people that they never would have hired under normal circumstances. Besides what makes you think they could even find enough people who would want the job? Other than a few hundred Ex-TWA that say they will scab (if they were ever really union minded then its just a bluff) where would they get them?

pay them a stipend to keep them on "hold" and when the whistle blows to strike, they can have the replacements ready to roll.

What would that cost? Would the expense be worth the gains, if there were any? You have to remember that todays wages are at least 40% below what they were back in the 80s and 90s. Todays candidates have to pass background checks and be able to get airport access, that in itself could take months. The only reason why AA has enough FAs is because they bought TWA, when is the last time you saw a Flight Attendant under 30 years of age? Not too many young people want to do that job. Maybe they could recruit some bag ladies just to claim they have replacements but what makes you think they could actually do the job or show up?


CHAOS has limited effectiveness, it could be enough, its certainly worth a try but a strike is still the most effective weapon for workers to improve working conditions and compensation.

They couldnt replace all the flight attendants that easily in 1993 and they couldnt do it today either. The likelyhood of getting other workgroups that are just as fed up as the FAs to cooperate is better than it has been in the past , we would be more willing to honor their picket lines as well if requested, something that the mechanics at NWA lacked. I've walked pickets with the Flight Attendants before and I would again. If the other groups cooperate what then? Replace everybody? Yea right, they are having a hard time keeping staff as it is despite the repeated claims of furloughs they keep announcing. In New York they've recalled everybody, in Detroit and Philadelphia it took months to fill Stock Clerk vacancies. Last year AA announced that they would be laying off hundreds of mechanics in the fall, they didnt. The company expects to lose at least 300 to 400 mechanics a year, they will likely lose more because that figure is based upon retireees at normal age, we have people quiting who they wouldnt expect to be quiting. More and more of my coworkers use their down time studying for other careers. Many started in 2003 and have or are getting to the point of having enough credits for the Batchelors degreees, a couple of friends in their 40s quit to become lawyers after spending many years of down time studying. Three other guys I know in their late 40s quit and went to Con Ed, they are now earning $10 more than they were at AA. Another started his own HVAC business. They didnt really want to go, they liked working on planes but they just realized what a dead end job the airlines were becoming. There is life after the airlines, even for middle aged workers and more and more of us are finding that out without the incentive of a layoff. Many of those who reamin have spouses that earn more than they do(my wife just got a start date as a nurse for $4more than I earn) so company threats dont carry much weight.

The fact is that AA(and the airline industry) is facing a labor crisis. Labor is in a far better position than they realize. Those who left are not coming back,(the exception being a few hundred ex-TWA-maybe) in the past the airlines could lay people off when things got slow then get them back as demand increased, thats not the case anymore. Continued shrinking of the airline has hid the problem but when the economy recovers AA can expect that those who they exploited will not make things easier for them and the reputation that they've earned for themselves will keep new workers away. Todays young people are not as willing to give into the personal demands of working for an airline, especially when you consider what the airlines want to pay. When the ecomomy expands and AA needs more workers other sectors of the eceomony will also need more people and AA will not only have to find people to replace those who leave due to retirement but also those who they never expected to leave-those in middle age, and the problem will be even worse for those who eliminated their pensions.

 

[eolesen]

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle, folks.

There's no way to replace all FA's without some serious disruption to the schedules. Sure, you could run a fair number of 7 day wonders thru FAA training in a month, but realistically, that could only happen after a strike.

All APFA would have to do is *not* strike and it would cost AA money (think NWA again). And I really don't see AA going nuclear and doing a lock-out.

But, do try to remember in 1993 that there were over 2000 applicants for replacement workers on the first day of the strike. Not applications -- actual people who showed up at HDQ/XLC to be interviewed.

With both unemployment, and foreclosure rates continuing to rise, I wouldn't be too quick to underestimate the number of people willing to work for barely-above-minimum-wage and under the crappiest of conditions.

Current case and point -- people still are willing to go to work for Mesa Airlines.

Obama ain't filling up their gas tanks, it's more and more likely that free medical insurance for all is turning into yet another empty promise from the campaign trail, and the only hope people have at this point is to keep finding a way of putting food on the table, and the only change they're interested is what's left in their pocket after paying the bills.

 

[jimntx]

The only reason why AA has enough FAs is because they bought TWA, when is the last time you saw a Flight Attendant under 30 years of age? Not too many young people want to do that job.

Bob, the reason you don't see many flight attendants at AA under the age of 30 has nothing whatsoever to do with who does or does not want to do the job. The reason you don't see many AA f/as under the age of 30 is because AA does not hire under the age of 20 (19?), and there has been no flight attendant hiring since 2001. Do the math.

As a matter of fact, my new hire class in 2000 was about 70% young people under the age of 30--most under 25. I can't tell you how many times I was told in that 6 weeks, "Gee, my parents aren't as old as you." :unsure:

I think if you were to go to a Continental hiring open house or to a Southwest recruiting session (they do like AA, groups brought in the same day by invitation only), you would see plenty of young people applying. People still get their idea of what this job is from the movies and TV--you know, all widebody a/c and long layovers in exotic locales. It's one reason that most airlines tend to lose a lot of new hires in the first year. Wichita and Omaha just ain't that exotic. (Well, that and a lot of them find out it's much harder than they thought to live on 70 hours of pay per month, and they thought they would be based in Dallas where their parents live--not LGA sleeping 14 to a 2-bedroom apt.)

 

[FrugalFlyerv2.0]

Say what you will, CHAOS worked VERY well at Alaska.

Pardon my ignorance, but since the 1990s CHAOS at Alaska, at what other airline has CHAOS been implemented & worked?

Call me old fashioned, but the only effective union in getting $$$ for their members seems to have been the UAW, where the workers strike. All of them. Mind you the UAW has wrecked the automakers in the process, but you can't say they didn't get $$$ for their members. But I digress.

 

[goodgirl37]

They couldnt get the process started in one month. Its your fantasy that they could train and keep 16,000 people on call and ready. You have zero credible information to state that as fact.

If they would actually they have to train and keep more than twice that number to have that many available. If they are not cross utilized you need thousands more. I wonder in your dreams how they get these 16,000 people to where they need to be. You are dreaming that one AA would pay 16,000 or 24.000 people some monthly income and two that AA has the money to set up, train and pay these people.

I just love your optimism FA Mikey, go get em tiger!! So I will respond to your post, Eols and Bobs all at once. First off, you dont have to strike before AMR starts to train replacements, if they wanted to, they could start hiring today for your replacement. The naive brains kill me, ok, second, AMR will not train them At "YOUR" facilities, they will rent out facilities in (lets say) NM... set up simulators, equip, etc.. and start putting them through. Actually, they wont have to train "double" the amount of flight attendants at all, b/c, everyone knows (except for you), that all 16,000 f/as aren't utilizied daily. Once again lets look at NWA mechanics, they trained these mechanics off site (property) and had them ready to go when the mechanics struck, replaced them immediately, and what happended? Thank You!!! If you deny the facts, you are doing yourself a huge injustice, and I hope if you feel this way, that you do strike. Then we will see what the outcome will be. Don't be surprised when you CHAOS, or something similar since it is trademarked by AFA... This is similar to your mirror FA Mikey, when you look at it, it doesnt lie, no matter what you tell yourself!!!

 

[FWAAA]

Cranky and lazy as a lot of flight attendants are (not just picking on them, just about anyone in a customer service position these days has a contempt for the customers) I would choose them over a bunch of 19, 22, 35 or 40 year olds in for a short temp spot.

I agree with your entire post, but I should have been more clear in mine; I don't see anyone at AA daydreaming about the possibility of hiring thousands of new FAs as temporary strike replacements - but only with an eye toward making them permanent replacements. Hiring, security clearing, training, etc. would probably take a few months, maybe even a year, and would cost tens of millions of $$$, an investment that just can't be justified unless the hope would be to lockout the current FAs forever.

I used 15k FAs (rather than everyone else's number of 16k) because I assumed that the trip and duty rigs work rules would be gutted, as would part-time and non-flying FAs. Might be able to do it with 12k if AA worked them 100 hours or more a month. Maybe as few as 10k FAs if AA had full reign on schedules (I assume AA would assign without any "bidding" by FAs). Since the current seniority system wouldn't be in place, the prime trips could be spread around so that everyone would get to fly to NRT, LHR, CDG, GIG, etc, perhaps making everyone happier about being worked to death.

To Bob: I see plenty of young FAs at the airlines that have been hiring, like American Eagle, Airtran, Southwest and jetBlue. They get their share of older candidates as well, but no shortage of 19-25 year olds.

To everyone:

This past week, Paul Krugman wrote that US unemployment is likely to peak in 2011, at even higher levels than today:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=8594380

Officially, about 15 million Americans are currently unemployed:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Add in all those not even counted by the G as unemployed and there are easily 20 million or more who'd take a job at the right price.

And AA couldn't attract 15k or 16k flight attendants to work 100 hours a month (or more) at $20 - $25/hr?

 

[goodgirl37]

I agree with your entire post, but I should have been more clear in mine; I don't see anyone at AA daydreaming about the possibility of hiring thousands of new FAs as temporary strike replacements - but only with an eye toward making them permanent replacements. Hiring, security clearing, training, etc. would probably take a few months, maybe even a year, and would cost tens of millions of $$$, an investment that just can't be justified unless the hope would be to lockout the current FAs forever.





No it doesnt, maybe since AA hasnt hired in so long you dont know, but it takes less than a couple of days to get a security check, please, with technology and an outside agency, it can be done faster than you can blink your eyes. A security check doesnt mean personal visits to your house by the FBI, it means the click of a button on a computer. Live and learn i guess..

 

[FA Mikey]

Pardon my ignorance, but since the 1990s CHAOS at Alaska, at what other airline has CHAOS been implemented & worked?

I will help you out. No Where Else! I would argue it didnt work at Alaska either. Two flights were put on strike. About 1/2 dozen people replaced. If that is all it took to bring Alaska airlines management to its knees, AFA should have been able to secure a deal in negotiations prior to the cooling off period.

 

[FA Mikey]

I just love your optimism FA Mikey, go get em tiger!! So I will respond to your post, Eols and Bobs all at once. First off, you dont have to strike before AMR starts to train replacements, if they wanted to, they could start hiring today for your replacement.

They would have to. There is simply no other way to do it. They will need a couple years to get it done.

Actually, they wont have to train "double" the amount of flight attendants at all, b/c, everyone knows (except for you), that all 16,000 f/as aren't utilizied daily.

FYI we fly 7 days a week in the course of a month you will use the bulk of your people. Unless they are qualified on every AC, they will have to train double or triple the amount to staff all the AC.

Once again lets look at NWA mechanics, they trained these mechanics off site (property) and had them ready to go when the mechanics struck, replaced them immediately, and what happended? Thank You!!!

Wow, and I thought they had to go to school and get an A & P license. That takes about 2 years to get. So you are telling us NWA hired and trained all these guess and some off site undisclosed location?

 

[JimJimmyJim]

Wow, and I thought they had to go to school and get an A & P license. That takes about 2 years to get. So you are telling us NWA hired and trained all these guess and some off site undisclosed location?

They already had A&P license. They just had to be trained in NWA procedures.

 

[goodgirl37]

They would have to. There is simply no other way to do it. They will need a couple years to get it done.

FYI we fly 7 days a week in the course of a month you will use the bulk of your people. Unless they are qualified on every AC, they will have to train double or triple the amount to staff all the AC.

Wow, and I thought they had to go to school and get an A & P license. That takes about 2 years to get. So you are telling us NWA hired and trained all these guess and some off site undisclosed location?

People at most airlines are trained on all a/c types so they can fly everything, well at least thats the smart way to do it.. Thats the way its done at UAL, when you go through training you learn everything for every a/c... Sorry that you guys are so limited.

 

[AC AA LA FA]

can someone address the time line to obtain certification before becoming a F/A at a US Carrier..?
Law states that all F/As must be certified....
anyone...???

 

[FA Mikey]

People at most airlines are trained on all a/c types so they can fly everything, well at least thats the smart way to do it.. Thats the way its done at UAL, when you go through training you learn everything for every a/c... Sorry that you guys are so limited.

I am sorry was the discussion about how current FA's are trained or about training strike breakers. Try following the bouncing ball.