TWU and IAM representation alliance vote

[Bob Owens]

 

Basic math? Do you even know what that means? 
 
I have documents where UPS does a comparison and it does include AA, UA etc. AA doesn't want to compare to even SWA anymore, they used to but now its not convenient. Since when does labor simply allow the company to pick and choose which competitors it wants to compare to? --That is a question that none of the unions who currently represent mechanics in the airline sector haven't been able to answer. Even AMFA has comparisons to other passenger airlines and doesn't inlcude freight carriers. For UPS, it's to their benefit to compare others since it undoubtedly drives down the compensation level.
 
You keep making the same statements over and over again as if it means something and ignore the fact that what you are citing was always the case, even when we were all paid around the same. SWA, FEd Ex and UPS NEVER had the scope of in house OH that AA or the other legacies had. --And because the alternative for those carriers was to raise the level of compensation which was subsidized by their ability to have maintenance work done at a much lower expense. IF you believe it is advantageous to allow the outsourcing of the heavy maintenance in order to reap the same hourly compensation to those that remain, then just say so. That seems to be the alternative of being the highest paid in the industry...outsourcing.
 
Prior to 9-11 AA had the most liberal outsourcing language in the industry, up to 50%, and that went all the way back to CR Smith. AA never sought to exploit that because of all the other concessions they were able to get, why ship it out when you can do it in house and pay less? In 2003 AA got B-scale with a 12 year progression and max 4 weeks VC, the best its competitors could get out of their Unions was 5 year B-scale that started out $4/hr higher than AA with 6 weeks max vacation. Topped out wages were around the same back then but the super long progressions and lower starting wage save AA millions, until they couldn't attract or retain talent, then they put in Flex Rates and shortened the progression. Then in 1995 AA got super cheap SRPs. Since at least 1983 AA has had, and continues to have the lowest average hourly cost for AMTs in the industry. In fact even if topped out A&Ps made just as much as their peers at UAL and Delta AA would still have the lowest average hourly cost as long as they kept TUL and AFW. If AA were to switch to outsourcing they would lose any cost advantage, in fact it would probably reverse, AA would end up with the highest costs because being a late entry into that market along with an industrywide inability to attract and retain talent the MROs would charge AA substantially higher rates than they charge AA' competitors who they have been doing business with for years. --So your argument is that there would be no cost advantage to outsource because you believe the MRO's would charge AA more than any other airline they currently service. I guess it's pretty impressive that you have the pulse of the MRO industry or have some insider information that lead you to your conclusion. Be that as it may, I guess that's great news and it will allow the Maintenance negotiatiators to exploit that issue in a manner that will allow us to keep the OH work and get industry leading compensation.
 
There should be no excuse to be able to achieve those goals. For years the argument was that Fleet kept us down. Then it was Little & Videtich that kept us down. Well, those things have been cleared off the table and it should be full steam ahead in getting what we're supposed to get. You guys are in a position to make all your assertions on compensation come true. This is the time. There should be no more excuses....That's exciting, can't wait to have you guys fulfill what you've told us it possible...Carry on.

 

Problem with your argument is that none of it makes any sense. You make it sound like the Union is the owner of the labor that the members provide and the Union gives a discount for volume. You also assume that even though UPS and other carriers are buying the same thing that they are willing to pay more because they don't buy as much of it. I'm sure if UPS felt that they could replace their mechanics, and have the same performance that they would. Their Union has done a good job at taking into account the market and the potential impact to the operation and maintained compensation. You come here and lie and say that UPS got the wages they got at the expense of jobs, same claim against SWA, but neither of those carriers have ever laid off a single member, in fact headcount at both carriers is higher than it was in 2001. UPS and SWA were able to maintain compensation and their headcount while on the legacy side which typically had in house overhaul because the market for outsourcing, economies of scale, and contract language justified doing that work in house, we saw huge cuts in compensation AND headcount. Conversely you claim that we gave up everything we had to save jobs but in addition to the cuts in compensation we have seen our headcount decline by 50% and had several rounds of layoffs. The facts disagree with your claims.
 
Do both carriers employ less mechanics? Yes, they always did, so why were they only paying the same as AA back in 2001? If what you say is true why weren't they paying much more than the legacies back then? 
 
SWA and UPS make what they do, which is in real terms about what they were making in 2001, because the Unions there were not in bed with the company, and the advantage to be gained by busting the Union wasn't worth the cost. Here the Union busted the membership for the company by adopting the same Union busting arguments the companies used. They used people like you who claim to be Unionists pushing Union busting propaganda all designed to make workers think that they should accept giving the same product for much less compensation and spin it as a Noble sacrifice to "Save jobs".  AA 18000 mechanics in 2004, down to 90000 mechanics today. thats a 50% loss of jobs and wages are still lower today than they were in 2003 with no pension, no retiree medical, no Holiday pay, less vacation, less sick time, No PVs, straight time pay for training done on Overtime, etc etc etc. The fact is we do the same job, with the same licenses and even more liability but our Unions have not done a good job, instead they adopt Union busting rhetoric to try and convince their members that they should not expect fair compensation.
 
As far as the costs of outsourcing the company admitted in negotiations that if they did try and outsource the narrow body fleet that they expected they would "have to pay a premium" and would not be able to reach their savings goal through outsourcing.  

 

[ThirdSeatHero]

Problem with your argument is that none of it makes any sense. You make it sound like the Union is the owner of the labor that the members provide and the Union gives a discount for volume. You also assume that even though UPS and other carriers are buying the same thing that they are willing to pay more because they don't buy as much of it. I'm sure if UPS felt that they could replace their mechanics, and have the same performance that they would. Their Union has done a good job at taking into account the market and the potential impact to the operation and maintained compensation. You come her and lie and say that UPS got the wages they got at the expense of jobs, same claim against SWA, but neither of those carriers have ever laid off a single member, in fact headcount at both carriers is higher than it was in 2001. Conversely you claim that we gave up everything we had to save jobs but in addition to the cuts in compensation we have seen our headcount decline by 50% and had several rounds of layoffs. The facts disagree with your claims. Do both carriers employ less mechanics? yes, they always did, so why were they only paying the same as AA back in 2001? 
 
SWA and UPS make what they do, which is in real terms about what they were making in 2001, because the Unions there were not in bed with the company, and the advantage to be gained by busting the Union wasn't worth the cost. Here the Union busted the membership by using people like you who claim to be Unionists pushing Union busting propaganda all designed to make workers think that they should accept giving the same product for much less compensation. 
 
As far as the costs of outsourcing the company admitted in negotiations that if they did try and outsource the narrow body fleet that they expected they would "have to pay a premium" and would not be able to reach their savings goal through outsourcing.  

 
Outstanding Post BoB 
 
+1

 

[Bob Owens]

Absolutely if all OH and Title 2 were farmed out to lower cost vendors then line mechanics would be earning substantially more than they currently do. 

One member on this forums page was the only one to admit that he would like to see that happen and while I may not agree with that line of thinking I did applaud his honesty.

Wrong, sort of. If all Title II and OH were farmed out yes Line maintenance would be earning substantially more, but it would not matter whether AA found low cost vendors or not. Line maint would be earning substantially more because those concessionary contracts would have been rejected by extremely large margins if only Line Maint was in the vote. The company would have actually had to negotiate instead of having people like Videtich deliberately drag talks on and on and on in order to soften up both the Local representatives and the membership. Despite three years of negotiations and a rejected TA the TWU International refused to push for a release. Our Union has a long history of manipulating both Title II and OH, exploiting their fears (fear that were instilled by unelected union leaders) to get them to time and time again vote in concessions. Even to this day, under the new leadership they continue to keep Title II separated from their fellow mechanics despite the fact that several groups of them have requested to leave the fleet locals and join with other mechanics.
 
One of the things your side leaves out is the UPS agreement allows them to outsource but it also limits where they can outsource. SWA has similar language which kept the work stateside, as does UAL with their Narrowbody fleet. AA and US have no such restrictions. Our deal lets the company send the work anywhere in the world they choose to. 

 

[Bob Owens]

 
Outstanding Post BoB 
 
+1

Thanks. In addition I would add that the Unions were in bed with the company because we had three different Unions competing for mechanics dues and everyone knew that consolidation was inevitable. The Unions at the legacy carriers engaged in a race to the bottom in an attempt to give the carrier where they represented mechanics an advantage to increase the chance that "their" carrier would be one of those that emerged in the consolidated industry. All the BS about saving jobs is a lie, the carriers cut as many jobs as they wanted, and they were able to cut compensation beyond their wildest dreams, in fact they cut them so much that now there is real growing concern that they won't have anyone to replace us when we die off. The only reason why AA didn't outsource as much as some of the others is because AA already had an MRO cost structure at two of its bases due to concessions we gave in 1995. Getting the rest of us at a discount is just an extra bonus for the company. 
 
AMT magazine reported that according to their survey over 70% of the A&Ps out there are over 50 years of age. Over 30% are over 60. 

 

[TRAVIS]

Ok i'll get the Mop Again...LOL

 

[TRAVIS]

Hay BOB what does a union MOP guy make??
 
Never mind, I've had enough let downs lately. It might pay more than a IAM AMT..... :angry2:

 

[swamt]

HAD ENOUGH YET GUYS???

 

[WeAAsles]

Wrong, sort of. If all Title II and OH were farmed out yes Line maintenance would be earning substantially more, but it would not matter whether AA found low cost vendors or not. Line maint would be earning substantially more because those concessionary contracts would have been rejected by extremely large margins if only Line Maint was in the vote. The company would have actually had to negotiate instead of having people like Videtich deliberately drag talks on and on and on in order to soften up both the Local representatives and the membership. Despite three years of negotiations and a rejected TA the TWU International refused to push for a release. Our Union has a long history of manipulating both Title II and OH, exploiting their fears (fear that were instilled by unelected union leaders) to get them to time and time again vote in concessions. Even to this day, under the new leadership they continue to keep Title II separated from their fellow mechanics despite the fact that several groups of them have requested to leave the fleet locals and join with other mechanics.

That's your perspective of things Bob but they don't speak for the mindset of all. The members who hold you back are all members who live in an extremely low cost of living area and what they make is far beyond what the average wage is for that locale (Tulsa) You can call it fear if you like but maybe in their minds they don't want to risk F'ing up a good gig? Like I said further back in the thread, I wish you would spend just one year living in the South and you would understand exactly what I'm talking about.
 
One of the things "your side" leaves out is the UPS agreement allows them to outsource but it also limits where they can outsource. SWA has similar language which kept the work stateside, as does UAL with their Narrowbody fleet. AA and US have no such restrictions. Our deal lets the company send the work anywhere in the world they choose to.

What side is that Bob? You really think you have me pegged don't you? I'm trying to give you a little sense of what you're up against and that not everyone has the New York mentality. You really need to stop trying to put people in such tiny little boxes. The world is a lot more complex then you might think.

And just so you know I am reading what you're posting and am agreeing with more than you might think. Your turn to try and do the same. 

 

[NYer]

Problem with your argument is that none of it makes any sense. You make it sound like the Union is the owner of the labor that the members provide and the Union gives a discount for volume. You also assume that even though UPS and other carriers are buying the same thing that they are willing to pay more because they don't buy as much of it. I'm sure if UPS felt that they could replace their mechanics, and have the same performance that they would. Their Union has done a good job at taking into account the market and the potential impact to the operation and maintained compensation. You come here and lie and say that UPS got the wages they got at the expense of jobs, same claim against SWA, but neither of those carriers have ever laid off a single member, in fact headcount at both carriers is higher than it was in 2001. UPS and SWA were able to maintain compensation and their headcount while on the legacy side which typically had in house overhaul because the market for outsourcing, economies of scale, and contract language justified doing that work in house, we saw huge cuts in compensation AND headcount. Conversely you claim that we gave up everything we had to save jobs but in addition to the cuts in compensation we have seen our headcount decline by 50% and had several rounds of layoffs. The facts disagree with your claims.
since 2001, with mergers and with the economics changing the legacy passenger carriers have taken a hit because of their higher cost structure. In the meantime, the low cost carriers such as SWA, Jetblue, Spirit and the like have actually gained market share and grown. So yes, SWA has been able to keep their employees and actually add to it. In the case of UPS, they have also grown in the ast decade with more and more packages being shipped due to online purchasing and the growth of businesses such as Amazon. Therefore, those airlines have grown. So although your simplistic comparisons just don't hold water.
 
Do both carriers employ less mechanics? Yes, they always did, so why were they only paying the same as AA back in 2001? If what you say is true why weren't they paying much more than the legacies back then? Again, those companies grew while the rest of the legacy carries shrunk either by mergers, bankruptcies or both. In their fortunate circumstance of growth, the mechanics in those firms were able to take advantage of the circumstance. Ironically, now that the legacy carriers have cut their expenses it seems SWA is in the middle of trying to lower their costs and have even announced layoffs within somw of their workgroups.
 
SWA and UPS make what they do, which is in real terms about what they were making in 2001, because the Unions there were not in bed with the company, and the advantage to be gained by busting the Union wasn't worth the cost. Here the Union busted the membership for the company by adopting the same Union busting arguments the companies used. They used people like you who claim to be Unionists pushing Union busting propaganda all designed to make workers think that they should accept giving the same product for much less compensation and spin it as a Noble sacrifice to "Save jobs".  AA 18000 mechanics in 2004, down to 90000 mechanics today. thats a 50% loss of jobs and wages are still lower today than they were in 2003 with no pension, no retiree medical, no Holiday pay, less vacation, less sick time, No PVs, straight time pay for training done on Overtime, etc etc etc. The fact is we do the same job, with the same licenses and even more liability but our Unions have not done a good job, instead they adopt Union busting rhetoric to try and convince their members that they should not expect fair compensation. So I guess the other unions have kept all those things mentioned, plus their heavy maintenance and have not lost mechanic headcount. This phenomenon has only happened to the TWU and only on the AA represented side.
 
As far as the costs of outsourcing the company admitted in negotiations that if they did try and outsource the narrow body fleet that they expected they would "have to pay a premium" and would not be able to reach their savings goal through outsourcing.  Yet, the outsourcing they did get was counted as a savings

 

[Bob Owens]

 

 
 
One of the things "your side" leaves out is the UPS agreement allows them to outsource but it also limits where they can outsource. SWA has similar language which kept the work stateside, as does UAL with their Narrowbody fleet. AA and US have no such restrictions. Our deal lets the company send the work anywhere in the world they choose to.

What side is that Bob? You really think you have me pegged don't you? I'm trying to give you a little sense of what you're up against and that not everyone has the New York mentality. You really need to stop trying to put people in such tiny little boxes. The world is a lot more complex then you might think.

And just so you know I am reading what you're posting and am agreeing with more than you might think. Your turn to try and do the same. 

 

"Your side" being those who somehow buy into the idea that the value of our labor is dependent upon the profits that our management is able to make with that labor.  AA does not get a discount on landing fees because they don't make as much as UPS, why should they expect a discount on our labor?  

 

[MetalMover]

Wrong, sort of. If all Title II and OH were farmed out yes Line maintenance would be earning substantially more, but it would not matter whether AA found low cost vendors or not. Line maint would be earning substantially more because those concessionary contracts would have been rejected by extremely large margins if only Line Maint was in the vote. The company would have actually had to negotiate instead of having people like Videtich deliberately drag talks on and on and on in order to soften up both the Local representatives and the membership. Despite three years of negotiations and a rejected TA the TWU International refused to push for a release. Our Union has a long history of manipulating both Title II and OH, exploiting their fears (fear that were instilled by unelected union leaders) to get them to time and time again vote in concessions. Even to this day, under the new leadership they continue to keep Title II separated from their fellow mechanics despite the fact that several groups of them have requested to leave the fleet locals and join with other mechanics.
 
One of the things your side leaves out is the UPS agreement allows them to outsource but it also limits where they can outsource. SWA has similar language which kept the work stateside, as does UAL with their Narrowbody fleet. AA and US have no such restrictions. Our deal lets the company send the work anywhere in the world they choose to. 

Good post Bob.....But be careful applauding UPS and SWA contract language which limits outsourcing offshore.....It is almost like saying it is ok to send the work to TIMCO because they're stateside.
 
OUTsourcing is exactly that....OUTsourcing.....Doesn't matter to the people who lost their jobs because of it,  WHERE it goes.

 

[Bob Owens]

 

 
 
Do both carriers employ less mechanics? Yes, they always did, so why were they only paying the same as AA back in 2001? If what you say is true why weren't they paying much more than the legacies back then? Again, those companies grew while the rest of the legacy carries shrunk either by mergers, bankruptcies or both. In their fortunate circumstance of growth, the mechanics in those firms were able to take advantage of the circumstance. Ironically, now that the legacy carriers have cut their expenses it seems SWA is in the middle of trying to lower their costs and have even announced layoffs within somw of their workgroups.
 
 

 

Choose a metric by which you want to define size and growth. In one post you seem to be going by revenue, then in another by employees. Between 2003 and 2010 AA may have slashed 40,000 employees and 300 airplanes but their revenue grew by $7 billion, from $17 billion to $24 billion. So in other words they saw roughly a 30% increase in productivity on top of a 25% cut in compensation. A double bonus if you will which they used to clear billions in debt and then lay down an order for over 500 more new airplanes on top of the orders already in place. The $7 billion in increased revenue more than covered increased fuel prices, then they still had the savings of having dumped 40,000 workers, they may have still been paying the leases on some of the planes they dumped but they were operating 300 less planes. 
 
SWA. Again, how many mechanics were laid off? The fact is no matter how much you try and tell us that our labor has no value and we should be thankful that the Union negotiated the crappy deals we have the facts say otherwise, non-union workers often have better pay and benefits. As far as workers at other carriers also losing things other than compensation, up until 2003, when without even going into bankruptcy we gave well in excess of 25% back, which included things such as less Vacation(retroactive a year), less sick time, no holidays, just half pay for just five of them, etc, etc, etc the most those carriers had been able to extract was a straight 14% pay cut. Our out of bankruptcy concessions sent them all back for more. (By the way Tom Roth, the expert that the TWU hired said flat out "You are better off being fat than skinny going into BK", in other words we never should have given the concessions we did prior to AA filing BK because the ask would have been the same either way, except we would be 25% higher than where we ended up. Yes we held on to the pensions for an extra 9 years (at a 17% lower wage) but that saved AA money as well, in other words it cost us money, IIRC approximately $180,000 in lost wages and lost 401K contributions per mechanic. In negotiations the company admitted that the pension was costing them less than the 401K was, but over the long term it could cost them more. Thanks to Jim Little we helped the company get legislation that allowed them to defer payments to the pension without being deemed underfunded. In other words we helped allow them to underfund what the expected liability would be without it being called underfunded, and defer catching up till a later date, so those funds stayed with AA instead of going into our pensions, it allowed AA to build up the total pension debt, which made it more valuable as far as getting concessions when they finally did elect to file for C-11. But in the end we lost our pensions anyway, so AA once again saved even more than their peers who may have cleaned up their ledgers a few years earlier but were paying more into Pensions than AA (for non-pilots or management). 

 

[Bob Owens]

Good post Bob.....But be careful applauding UPS and SWA contract language which limits outsourcing offshore.....It is almost like saying it is ok to send the work to TIMCO because they're stateside.
 
OUTsourcing is exactly that....OUTsourcing.....Doesn't matter to the people who lost their jobs because of it,  WHERE it goes.

It does matter.
 
The advantage for us as far as limiting the outsourcing to domestic carriers is those facilities are in the same labor market, therefore their prices will be higher than say South America or parts of Aisia and with inferior quality  and less control over scheduling it makes outsourcing less appealing, thats whats driving work back in house at UAL.
 
Restricting it to domestic also helps drive up demand for our labor here in the US. 
 
Restricting outsourcing to domestic MROs also means that we are looking at job transfers instead of net job loss as far as our labor market. So if they outsource domestically more than likely those laid off will be able to find employment where they outsourced, and still have recall back to a better job at the carrier. 
 
So its best to keep the work in house, use the argument of efficiency and quality, if that doesn't work then its better to keep it domestic vs foreign because its easier for the bottom guys to roll their boxes over to TIMCO or Spirit than El Salvador or Asia till they get recalled. Remember time stands still for no man, or even a legal person, with 70% over 50 years of age the few young ones the company lays off would be getting recalled (if they wanted it) within a few years. Now that we no longer have the DB pension it makes even less sense to try and stay at AA at any cost. The wages at MROs is very competitive with the starting wages at AA. At least thats what they claim. 

 

[MetalMover]

It does matter.
 
The advantage for us as far as limiting the outsourcing to domestic carriers is those facilities are in the same labor market, therefore their prices will be higher than say South America or parts of Aisia and with inferior quality  and less control over scheduling it makes outsourcing less appealing, thats whats driving work back in house at UAL.
 
Restricting it to domestic also helps drive up demand for our labor here in the US. 
 
Restricting outsourcing to domestic MROs also means that we are looking at job transfers instead of net job loss as far as our labor market. So if they outsource domestically more than likely those laid off will be able to find employment where they outsourced, and still have recall back to a better job at the carrier. 

Good in theory....But that's a long ways off....We can't even fix our own house yet by booting the TWU out.

 

[Bob Owens]

Good in theory....But that's a long ways off....We can't even fix our own house yet by booting the TWU out.

Good in theory....But that's a long ways off....We can't even fix our own house yet by booting the TWU out.

One of the reasons why the other licensed airmen out there, (Pilots), earn so much more than we do is they do look at their profession on a more macro scale. Until we do the same it really doesn't matter what Union we have. Layoffs will always be a part of the equation, thats why we have seniority, recall, and support Unemployment benefits etc. Whats the point in having all that if the theory is to barter away everything to mitigate layoffs?

The argument to accept concessions to save jobs is an old one, its one that every greedy boss has put forward since before there were unions, whats new is Unions adopting that argument as their own to get their members to give away everything Unions fought for. Unions are adopting this for the same reason as the company, greed. They are in bed together.