Top AA executives visit Tulsa base. AA/USAIR Committed to staying in Tulsa.

[topDawg]

In the town hall meetings Kirby, Seymour, and Isom all made it clear that DL+7 also encompasses their work scope.

Hope you guys tell them to f-off then. That would mean about 10-15% more outsourcing for the LAA side.
 

That being said, DL is a monster on the engines side

We are big but send a good bit out as well. My understand is some of that is due to the contracts NW had (CFM56-5A)and some is due to limitations with our test cell (PW4168s). But we do the CF34, JT8D-219, PW2000, PW4000-94, CF6-80A/80C2, CFM56-3/5B/7 in house. (just got the CF6-80C2B8Fs back in house) Also with the new test cell we got the license for the Trent 7000 and Trent XWB service center for North America. CFM56-5As, V2500s, Trent 800s, GE90s and PW4168s go out of house. (note, the T800s and GE90s don't have the numbers in the fleet to do them in house. Only talking 16 and 20 motors plus spares) 

Also huge on the component side. 

but almost nothing on the heavy airframe side.

No overhauls. All the c-checks on the fleet except the 747. They just brought the 330 c-checks in-house to MSP.

Overall on a percentage basis the outsource more than US

not even close. US is at about 55% outsourcing. Delta is in the low 40s.
US does more HMVs than Delta yes, but overall Delta does more in-house.
 

and AA.

This is true. AA is in the low 30s for how much % they send out.
 

And the 787 that flew in to TUL base for the meeting, if the articles I have read on that plane's program pan out, TUL base has no chance of seeing that plane in one of their hangars until 2027 for a schedule check.

That sounds about right. Generally wide bodies don't see the hangar for 18-24 months.


Anyways, best of luck to you guys, but no way in hell would I take Delta +7 with our outsourcing. Keeping it at around 30-35% and our pay I would really think about it though.

 

[dfw gen]

DELTA +7%.......... Read on

AA management has been talking about offering DELTA +7% for a wage increase. An enticing carrot in our face designed to affect our decisions. Sounds great and who wouldnt need a pay increase after concessions and the AA bankruptcy case decimated our contract. 

The question is when can we reasonably expect to see that pay increase on our paychecks?

Here are some important facts to consider before we allow the enticing carrot to affect our decisions.

American Airlines Pilots and Flight Attendants had quick collective bargaining agreements because those groups had agreements demanding contract terms in 30 days or go binding arbitration.

The TWU/IAM Association has no such binding arbitration agreement in place at this time.

Sean Ryan (IAM )and David Virella  (TWU) have told our membership in recent meetings that they expect negotiations on our contract to take up to 18 months.

It is unreasonable to have expectations of receiving this DELTA +7% pay increase (dangling carrot) anytime soon after the NMB certifies who our representation will be.

We should expect that much time will be required to obtain a contract unless a 30 day or binding arbitration agreement comes after NMB certification.

The point made here is to not let the DELTA +7% dangling carrot in front of you become your guide as to your representation decision at the  negotiating table. 
 
probably be about the time the 787 shows up in tulsa for overhaul....

 

 

[AA Tulsa Mechanic]

OMG the 787 flew into Tulsa to do pilot training. Smh

 

[Buck]

Buck are you Ostangs buddy in in TUL?
Steve Goeyvaerts
SFO A/C MAINT.

Yes over 30 years

 

[Buck]

"People this is about having a choice to vote on this association and to protect our PENSIONS from the IAM scam pension fund"
THIS IS SCARE TACTICS!!! The IAM Pension fund is 105% Funded, this is Public Fact!!! I Don't care if your anti TWU but Don't Lie about the Pension!!

N617P could you elaborate on the funding subject of the IAMPF? My question(s), if the IAMPF is at 105% what are the rules to be a member of that pension and what are the retirement rules?
 
Is age 65 full retirement? 
 
At age 65 with 30 years of service to I get 100 of my funding if I am a American Airlines employee?
 
Are there any reductions for going early? American's frozen fund is 60 years 100% and reduced by 3% a year down to age 55.
 
Are there going to be any costs for me to join the IAMPF pension? 
 
Will the IAMPF accept my yeas of service with American?
 
Will becoming a member of the IAMPF affect my 401k in any form, as in a reduction or increase in the matching by the new airline?
 
Can I keep my 401k ?

 

[787nightmare]

Furthermore, you're a pro AMFA AMT, and for bettering our profession & craft.
Carry on. ;-)

 

[Goey]

Yes over 30 years

Sad day when that happened. I loved Dave. I knew him for thirty years also back to Aircal. Hope to meet you someday look me up if your ever in SFO. Sorry to say I will never be in TUL if I can help it.
Steve Goeyvaerts
SFO A/C Maint.

 

[787nightmare]

Directed at swamt......(hit "quote" button....)
??

 

[Bob Owens]

All we asked for was a legal ruling of whether the company can hand over the trust & to another 
retirement fund. After months of asking the question, we never received a credible answer!
Its the TWU's fault by not informing its members properly on such a serious issue

According to the woman I spoke to at the EBSA, which is responsible for enforcing ERISA, if the parties agree the funds can be moved as long as we don't lose any protected benefits. Now this is where it gets interesting, by protected benefits it only means what you would get at 65. Early retirement terms are only protected if you are a qualified retiree, otherwise its a negotiated perk not protected. In other words if you retired prior to 65 and the plan changed hands you are protected, they cant cut your pension if your pension was through a single employer plan like we have at AA, but lets say you are 60 and still working, they change plans, the company decides to close your station, so you decide to retire instead of move or commute, your perks were not protected and you would fall under the new terms, under the AA DB terms you could retire at 60 and lose nothing but under the IAMNPF you would lose 22.5% of your pension, if this happened and you were just 55 years of age you would lose 45% of your pension and not be allowed to work in the industry. 
 
With the mentality of the current management team and their expressed willingness to totally disrupt lives this should be a major concern to all, even those in class I stations and Tulsa.  Lets look at Tulsa, lets say they did decide to close it or severely downsize it and you are around the average age of 55, you have 30 years with the company and your job was eliminated at Tulsa (Thats if you are an A&P, other workers are totally screwed.) . Your choice is New York or LAX, you hear that Spirit has decided to expand in Tulsa now that the AA facilities, owned by the City of Tulsa, has become available. So your choice is keep your pay and either move or commute to NY or LAX, both commutes require 4 flights round trip, or stay in Tulsa, retire from AA and work for less at Spirit. Under our current deal your take home pay between the pension and Spirit would probably be around the same as you are making at AA, if you went to NEW York or LAX you would have to deal with the high costs associated with living in those places, however if we are put into the IAMNPF you cant work at Spirit and if you did you would lose your pension income till you reach 65. 
 
The IAMNPF is all about eliminating choice, it eliminates your ability to collect what you earned and try other things if circumstances change. Choice is power and the IAMNPF is all about making us powerless and dependent on both the company and the IAM. Perfect example is how this whole Association, the pension agreement and other deals they put in place were all done in secret and without any membership or elected representatives input. 

 

[Bob Owens]

N617P could you elaborate on the funding subject of the IAMPF? My question(s), if the IAMPF is at 105% what are the rules to be a member of that pension and what are the retirement rules?
 
Is age 65 full retirement? 
 
 

Since he isn't answering, I'll hit what I can remember from reading their plan. 
 
Yes, penalties are in place at a rate of 4.5% per year prior to 65 vs our single employer plan that allows us to retire at age 60 without penalty, or other restictions the IAMNPF has and prior to 60 the penalty is just 3%. For comparison if you retire under the IAMNPF at 55 you lose 45% of your benefit and can not work, but under our current plan you lose 15% and can work. 
 

At age 65 with 30 years of service to I get 100 of my funding if I am a American Airlines employee? 
 
Will the IAMPF accept my yeas of service with American?
 
 

The only way that you could get credit for years and 100% would be to retire at 65 and if the Union in negotiations agrees to allow our pensions in the AA single employer plan to roll over to the IAMNPF. The company would love this-it lowers their debts, the PBGC would love this-it lowers their exposure,  and the IAMNPF would love this-it gives their plan a huge cash infusion, but YOU are the one who would be funding their Joy.  Otherwise there would be no funding to provide those promised benefits. Thats my concern, with the average age being over 55 we have on average less than 10 years to accumulate benefits in the IAMNPF so we would not accumulate very much, it would be very little, so in order to sell it to us they will need to promise us that we will end up with a pension closer to what we expected from AA, just remember, its a promise from a plan run by a Union that we don't even belong to and it comes with several "gotchas". 
 
 

Will becoming a member of the IAMPF affect my 401k in any form, as in a reduction or increase in the matching by the new airline?
 
 
Can I keep my 401k ?
 

The plan is funded by defined contributions from the company, but, if we ended up in the IAMNPF, instead of matching contributions going directly to you for all hours worked, $2/hr of your pay for a max of 2080 hours goes to this plan run by a Union you are not a member of. Currently the company would contribute a max of $4160 per year, regardless of how many hours OT worked. Essentially OT hours become pension free hours for the company. Assuming we put in a minimum of 5.5% our current company match with no OT at all costs the company $4181.32, and with each raise it goes up. Switching to the IAMNPF is a paycut, even without factoring in OT, Holidays etc and that pension paycut gets bigger with each raise in base rates we get. Right now without OT its just $21, in Sept if UAL gets an industry leading contract we should see an increase up to around $40/hr, now without OT our pension would be cut by around $450, not counting OT, Holidays etc. 
 
What we need to do is concentrate on getting a negotiated 401K contribution like the other Unions on the property got instead of just taking what the company offered at 5.5% match which is shite but still better than the IAMNPF which is even worse, 17% for the APA and up to 9% for the APFA, not a match, 401K CONTRIBUTION. 
 
Would you rather take a cut to your current pension and have your pension run by a Union you don't belong to, that imposes restrictions on your choices and penalties for those choices or fight for a fair contribution, in line with the other unions on the property, and have your money given to you where not only is it portable but its accessable? 

 

[WeAAsles]

According to the woman I spoke to at the EBSA, which is responsible for enforcing ERISA, if the parties agree the funds can be moved as long as we don't lose any protected benefits. Now this is where it gets interesting, by protected benefits it only means what you would get at 65. Early retirement terms are only protected if you are a qualified retiree, otherwise its a negotiated perk not protected. In other words if you retired prior to 65 and the plan changed hands you are protected, they cant cut your pension if your pension was through a single employer plan like we have at AA, but lets say you are 60 and still working, they change plans, the company decides to close your station, so you decide to retire instead of move or commute, your perks were not protected and you would fall under the new terms, under the AA DB terms you could retire at 60 and lose nothing but under the IAMNPF you would lose 22.5% of your pension, if this happened and you were just 55 years of age you would lose 45% of your pension and not be allowed to work in the industry. 
 
With the mentality of the current management team and their expressed willingness to totally disrupt lives this should be a major concern to all, even those in class I stations and Tulsa.  Lets look at Tulsa, lets say they did decide to close it or severely downsize it and you are around the average age of 55, you have 30 years with the company and your job was eliminated at Tulsa (Thats if you are an A&P, other workers are totally screwed.) . Your choice is New York or LAX, you hear that Spirit has decided to expand in Tulsa now that the AA facilities, owned by the City of Tulsa, has become available. So your choice is keep your pay and either move or commute to NY or LAX, both commutes require 4 flights round trip, or stay in Tulsa, retire from AA and work for less at Spirit. Under our current deal your take home pay between the pension and Spirit would probably be around the same as you are making at AA, if you went to NEW York or LAX you would have to deal with the high costs associated with living in those places, however if we are put into the IAMNPF you cant work at Spirit and if you did you would lose your pension income till you reach 65. 
 
The IAMNPF is all about eliminating choice, it eliminates your ability to collect what you earned and try other things if circumstances change. Choice is power and the IAMNPF is all about making us powerless and dependent on both the company and the IAM. Perfect example is how this whole Association, the pension agreement and other deals they put in place were all done in secret and without any membership or elected representatives input. 

Bob I asked this on another thread but maybe you missed it?

So Bob let me ask you. You are a Union official. Do you believe your President Gary Peterson would agree to this in negotiations? You also know other Presidents out there. Do you believe they would agree to this? You've also gotten to know I'm sure Harry Lombardo, John Samuelson and Alex Garcia, do you think they would agree to this?

If 'somehow" this notion of our frozen pensions being rolled over and into the IAMPF was to be proposed and accepted for us to vote on, you don't think there would be an uproar of epic proportions? Even if all those items that Scorpion brought up were modified or waived we all know that the fund administrators could modify them back in the future.

I want you to make up a scenario where you can see one year from now that my pension is unfrozen and handed over to the IAMPF even if I don't agree for it to be so?

My friend Jerry back in NY left the company about 6 years ago and became a Court Officer. When he hits 55 he plans on drawing his 22 year pension even with the 15% hit between 55 and 60. So what do you believe happens to him?

You also do know that the IAM tried twice to get the PmCo members to FREEZE their CARP (Continental Airlines Retirement Plan) and go into the IAMPF and were rebuffed both times. They never proposed taking over the CARP as far as I know? Why do you feel they would propose taking over the TWU pensions?

 

[jimntx]

Yeah, and there was a time that they said that STL (for pilots and flight attendants) was an important part of their long-time plans.  At the time there were over 200 departures a day from STL.  Today there are something like 30 or 35 departures a day.  Important part of their long-time plans?

 

[Bob Owens]

Didn't the guys at MCI and AFW hear similar speeches? Same game, different faces. 

 

[1AA]

I was educated about how the negotiations work for the AMT's. There will be 6 on the AA side and 6 on the USAir side. The AA guys do not want the IAM pension. The USAir guys want the IAM pension. We have a tie. Since the IAM will have control of the negotiations and run the association for the first two years he (chair person or whatever you want to call him) will decide on the tie breaker. Care to guess what the outcome will be? AA is the bigger union by a margin of 4 to 1. The IAM will control negotiations. This is how it is set up. Don't believe me? Do your own research, I did.
At the quarterly meeting in DFW the membership made a motion to not include anything in reference towards our frozen AA pensions in negotiations. They also made a motion for the membership to have a vote if anything in reference towards our frozen AA pensions is to be mentioned in negotiations. Care to guess how far those motions are going to go? We asked straight hard questions about our pensions and the IAM pension plan. Nobody wants to commit to anything. We have no answers and no say. Don't post opinions or comments about no one has said they will go after our pensions at AA. No one is saying they wont either.
 
 
With the format the association has put in place the IAM will get what they want. All they have to do is negotiate something that the AA guys want no part of and the IAM guys will vote for it and have the IAM chair guy break the tie. WE are screwed big time.
This whole association thing will be a big mess. Do you really think a contract will be in place in 60 days, 120 days? Try more like 18 to 36 months. Many are saying give me my money. We wont get our money until a jcba is in place. Sign a card, this will only push things back a couple of months. A couple of months is a very small price to pay if you let the association in for the rest of our days at American and after you retire if the IAM gets ahold of our pension and eliminates the 401K plan.

 

[WeAAsles]

I was educated about how the negotiations work for the AMT's. There will be 6 on the AA side and 6 on the USAir side. The AA guys do not want the IAM pension. The USAir guys want the IAM pension. We have a tie. Since the IAM will have control of the negotiations and run the association for the first two years he (chair person or whatever you want to call him) will decide on the tie breaker. Care to guess what the outcome will be? AA is the bigger union by a margin of 4 to 1. The IAM will control negotiations. This is how it is set up. Don't believe me? Do your own research, I did.
At the quarterly meeting in DFW the membership made a motion to not include anything in reference towards our frozen AA pensions in negotiations. They also made a motion for the membership to have a vote if anything in reference towards our frozen AA pensions is to be mentioned in negotiations. Care to guess how far those motions are going to go? We asked straight hard questions about our pensions and the IAM pension plan. Nobody wants to commit to anything. We have no answers and no say. Don't post opinions or comments about no one has said they will go after our pensions at AA. No one is saying they wont either.

Good. I think there is a clear and unanimous consensus among TWU members in regards to any discussion regarding our frozen pensions being put at risk into any multi-employer plan. 

But I wouldn't have entertained your motion either if that's how it was worded. That motion hamstrings your negotiators from even mentioning to the company that they would like it unfrozen and reinstated. Why would anyone want to put our negotiators in the position of not even being able to ask?