Let's ask Bob Owens if the membership had a say regarding "pay". WE don't have a say on anything regarding the CBA. C'mon, didn't you know that the secret society of geniuses know more than 11,000 dumb AMT's???
We do have a say, when we vote on what gets brought back. The problem is the union leadership routinely provides misleading information. Case in point, the release from the TWU international describes the Fleet TA as a four year deal with a 9% increae instead of a seven plus year deal with concessions that will eliminate jobs and likely cost them around $100,000 each by the time they die by giving up the pre funded retiree medical and the matching funds.
These half truths have been standard fare as long as I've been here.
When I was hired we were making much less than our peers at UAL, top wage was less, we had less vacation, less sick time and other concessions however the TWU would claim that we had a better pension because our multiplier was higher, ours was, it was .0167 as opposed to UAL's .0165. The catch was we lost the first year, so the advantage was cancelled out.
Then came LTD, we started paying for this, some of our peers still don't pay for this.
Then came Flex Benifits.
Then came Prefunding, now, after the company had this concession in place for 20 years they are trying to get us to agree to the removal of millions of members dollars from a bankruptcy protected fund and hand half of them over to the company to pay the company's obligations to their retirees.
Then came SRPs which devastated airline run overhaul in the US, with AA, AA had this cost saving measure well established when the post 9-11 downturn sent competitors into BK. Since there was no feasible way that they could put this cost saving structure in place they simply outsourced the work.
Then came giving he company more concessions outside of BK than they could expect to get in BK. Sure we kept our pensions and retiree medical but we more than paid the actual costs of retaining them by only getting five holidays at half pay, one week less vacation, straight time for training, and other inferior work rules.
Now we see the international staying very quiet about what exactly will be given up by giving in to the companies demands, they only stress and headline what they are getting and distort the timeline.
In the end it usually comes out, the members vote based on what the International puts out, when the members finally realized they were sold out the international says "don't blame us, blame your negotiating committee" or " hey, you guys voted for it". They are not accountable to us as they are not put there by us. They automatically chair all committees and they can dissolve and overrule any committee but somehow they are to blame and the International claims they don't control the process, which is bull, Article 47 has it in black and white what the true role of the committee is, witnesses.
