It's beginning to sound to me like there will be NO acceptable contract as long as 24/7 base coverage is on the table.
And yes I am aware that the line supports the base in that area, and they will support our GEO pay.
If anyone thinks 8 years of concessions, (including 3 years without a contract)is a long time, just wait!
I hope I am wrong, but I do not believe the company will give in on the 24/7 base coverage AND they will not give in on GEO pay....
If they give GEO pay, then that will be expected to be extended to non union employees throughout the system.
This will all lead to a stalemate at which time the mediator will NOT grant us our release request and before you know it, we will be 4 years without a contract..
I do hope I am wrong.
The 7 day coverage is more of a control thing like Frank said. But its not purely just ego driven. The 7 day coverage really isnt to increase OH output, thats a temporary problem that could be solved by simply staffing all three shifts fully and that will go away as more 737s come on line and MD-80s go away, or so we've been told.
I think the motive is different. If the base has 7 day coverage and less pay than the line then the bases will be a source for line maintenance A&Ps for years to come. As other airlines will have to raise pay in order to attract enough new workers to maintain their line operations AA would have a huge resource of long term workers looking to go to the line, they would backfill the bases with new hires from the 7 different Schools that they admit that they've been working with.
At the April meeting the company claimed that if they met our contract demands that could lead to a BK filing six months down the road. We all know thats BS because at this point the company has nothing to gain by filing BK as far as their mechanics go.
Look at the presentation.
Are we any better off than our peers?
The immediate answer is "We still have a Pension and retiree medical".
OK, but both of those things are promises of things we will start to recieve as much as 30 years from now, and there's a good chance we wont. If the pilots hold firm they could bring this company into BK and there's nothing we can do about it, we could work for free and it would not matter, there are countless other variables that we have no control over that could put the company in BK. We have control over how much we sell our labor for, thats pretty much it.
The safest strategy is to make as much as you can and build up your savings, not sacrifice your ability to save and dump that money into a risky corporation where all the decisions are out of your control.
Having and relying on a DB pension for your future is now extremely risky, working for much less on top of that simply exposes you to even more risk in the here and now as well.
Lets look at the here and now.
Our current wages are less than US, DL, Co and the UAL TA. According to the company we earn $2.50 less than CO, Thats $5200 less per year.
We have one week less vacation than most of our BK peers, at our reduced rate of pay thats $1310/year less
We have seven less sick days than some of our BK peers, a o r r o p thats another $1834 less per year.
We lost the pilot cap, so we pay more than most of our peers and we pay around $1200 a years more than the FAs. Havent nailed down a solid number for UAL but it could be as much as $3000.
We get 77 less IOD days than some of our BK peers, thats up to $20, 174 less than our peers.
We get half the holidays at a lower multiplier than some of our peers. All totalled we get 20 hours extra pay if we work all the Holidays in a year while our peers walk away with up to 120 extra hours pay for working those same days. That comes out to $3275
So yes we have a promise at the moment that many years from now we may have the pension they are promising, if they decide to fund it (ref their latest pension disclosure where they said they can change it if they drop below 60%) but in the here and now how much better off are we than our peers who went through the BK process?
VC $1310
SK $1834
Med $1200
Holidays $3275
Assuming you dont get seriously injured just in the benifits side we are $7619 in the hole. Throw in the wage and its $12819 less, on an hourly basis that comes out to around $6.15 an hour less than our peers at BK carriers based on a 2080 hour year. They would have to be contributing $12,819 per year per person for us to have the same result as BK, they put in less than $1200. Less than 10%.
If you get hurt you can add another $20, 174 plus the first two days at half pay $262, $20436. So if 2 mechanics get the same exact injury at work the guy at one of our BK peers would get $28 K more from his company than his peer at AA.
So why should we be afraid of BK? All we have is a promise, a promise like the Supplimental Medical that the company collected and pocketed after 20 years. Have you ever met anyone who collected from that? You'd have a better chance coming across a LOTTO winner than an active employee who got a payout from the Supplimental Medical. While our pension, which is legally and woefully underfunded thanks to our own lobbying efforts, is still a promise that the company uses to drive down wages in the here and now our peers have been getting direct contributions to their 401K plans. Real money that the company cant touch once its there. Hell all BK could do is take away our pension and give us $6.15 an hour more in the here and now! No they dont have a DB pension but they have funds given to them by the company that they can borrow against, use in an emergency to prevent a forclosure and pass on to their hiers if they dont use it. We have a promise from AMR and the PBGC. Ask our peers from UAL, EAL, DL etc about that.
We essentailly are banking that AA will not go BK between now and the day we die. Is that a good bet?
When the pension arguement fails then they go with "we employ more people in maintenance". Yes but AA has had an advantage over their competitors, they had low cost OSMs and other very low paid classifications that effectively lowered the average pay. According to company documents its around $27/hr. Thats why AA continued to increase insourcing and kept hundreds of workers without system protection on the payroll. Those A&P mechanics are now a huge assett as competitors face shortages of mechanics. Third party providors are having a hard time getting people and even their pay levels are approaching the airlines. Thats why UAL is seeing a 60% recall rejection rate. Many of its laid off mechanics relocated to the low cost cities where those facilities are located, their pay has increased and when they look at a $1200 a month mortgage with a 20 minute commute vs a $5000 mortgage with a two hour commute the choice is easy. F U A L.
Do you feel confident putting all your eggs in the company's basket for the future? Sacrificing now for a promise in the future, like the Supplimental Medical? We need to get our money now. Even if as the company threatened we have to come back in 6 months and renegotiate it under BK. Like I said before we could work for nothing and the pilots could still put us in BK.
The company would not realize savings from maint in BK, our peers earn less and our pension costs the company less in the here and now than the DC plans. The pilots have very rich pension plans, they have to because they have shorter careers, there are no Al Blackmans among the pilots, and if the company sets their sites on it there's nothing we can do about it.
So the answer is not only are we worse off than our peers at other carriers that have never filed BK but we are worse off than nearly all those that have. The cost of avoiding BK was higher for us than the cost of going BK. We lag even our peers at carriers that filed BK in compensation, benifits and work rules. Our work rules allow the company to operate pretty much like a non-union shop. While our peers have defined CS rules in the contract we have CS's at managements discretion with different rules wherever you go. While our peers have strict language on letters of discipline we have CDDs and CR1s. CR1s are eternal, our peers have language where any letter regarding performance is removed after a year. Arbitrators frquently allow the company to enter CR1s into evidence that are several years old.
We have to go for the money, threats or no threats.
