So in other words you are advocating that if workers fight back they get stapled (start at the bottom like EAL) but if they roll over and give everything away and the people running the company decide to sell the company and pocket the value of their sacrifices that they get rewarded by being dovetailed? Why would we advocate giving management the ability through their actions and decisions to manipulate seniority?
Look at this scenario.
Two mechanics start on the same day in 1975. One at EAL and one at TWA. 15 years later the EAL guy starts all over again at AA at the bottom after telling Frank Lorenzo to pound salt with his concessions, all airline workers benefit because by stopping Lorenzo the concessions train slowed down. Approximately 10 years later both mechanics have 25 years in the business, the Former EAL guy lost 15 years and only has 10 at AA when TWA, where workers repeatedly said yes to Ichann, bringing them to the lowest wage in the industry (thus putting downward pressure on all wages in the industry) with no pension, retiree medical etc, get bought out by AA. Due to the merger the TWA guys see a several thousand dollar a year increase in pay, on top of that you feel they should also get to bump out the EAL guys to the street?
This scenario is more valid than you may realize. In fact we could change it to the EAL guy hiring in in 1965 and the TWA guy in 1975 and still getting bumped out of a job at AA with a dovetail. Or even have the TWA guy starting in 1989 and bumping out in 1965 EAL guy at AA in the event of a Dovetail.Both ended up at companies they didn't start at. Both get screwed (maybe). One definitely gets screwed twice with a Dovetail.
The fact is the overwhelming majority of TWA workers, much like USAIR workers welcomed the mergers, in both cases most of the AA workers were against the mergers. In both cases the other workers either saw or received a benefit to the merger while workers at AA saw ZERO benefit.
Seniority is a Union right secured by contractual language. Unions should not allow the system to be used to encourage concessions. Did the TWA guys get screwed? Yes, but they screwed themselves by giving up their contract which included language that would have protected their seniority in a merger, they did this to facilitate the merger. They gave up the language to make it happen then they wanted us to honor the language that no longer existed. Unlike the EAL guys they still got to come over to a big increase in pay with their Vacation and sick banks intact, 100 % seniority in some station and 25% in others. That's what the arbitrator came up with. They could have said no and fought back but they didn't, instead they (their union) chose to give up their language.
Maybe you should look a little closer at how seniority was handled at SWA/Air Tran. What the parties bring to the table matters, in the days when everyone pretty much got the same pay and benefits within pennies it was a much more strait forward process, both came as equals and are Dovetailed, but when one comes in with much less that changes things, that's how Kasher saw it, that is how it was determined at SWA as well. With US and AA we are both at the bottom of the industry, so I guess you can say we are equals. So Dovetail is appropriate, besides we are the larger group and I'm not wiling to give away contractual language protecting us in a merger to facilitate this merger. USAIRways is the carrier that's disappearing, not AA.
I've said before if SWA bought us and we went to their wages and benefits I would not complain about being stapled. Clearly we would benefit more from such a merger than the SWA guys would.
