TWU negotiations.........what?

[TWU informer]

Informer/overspeed aka real union man in action!

"I'm looking for an weld management position"

And what's the difference between you and mark easton or Michael Jackson? Oh that's right use your INFLUENCE to get where you want to be?

Easton and Jackson both happen to have higer standard of living than you or I do.

And I don't see either one of them on this forum whining and complaining that somone else in their work group is shafting them.

So you be the judge. Who has made the right decision?
But don't let the facts or the truth get in your way.

You can remain trapped in your little union world of reliance on a whole group of cowards all you want.
You can degrade me, call me names, or whatever else you like.
But that will not change your status, or where you are going with your head in the sand.

 

[Bob Owens]

Bob, Your logic is flawed.

AA is going to lower the cost structure using BK and then merge another carrier into that pay/benefit structure. Not the other way around.

And you will still be waiting for that pie in the sky that does not exist.

What you want to accomplish is the right idea, except for the fact that workers in this country are not going to take a stand that would be required to accomplish that plan. Instead, they will sit on their butts whining and complaining until the last hour, and then it will likely be too late to succeed. The reason the stand will not happen is because the likes of TWU and AFL-CIO will not risk their perfect world attempting to lead us into a challenge.

The company is offering "Pie in the Sky", claiming that if we work for less permanently than everyone else that it will provide us "opportunities and security", what they are leaving out is that we have to leave AA to get them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXFWwtTAMUY

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

Chorus:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

The starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray
'Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:

Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
If you fight hard for children and wife
Try to get something good in this life
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.


Joe Hill

 

[TWU informer]

Go for it Bob.

I will be here telling you once again I told you so.

Nothing would make me happier though than to be wrong myself and instead hearing you say you told me so.

 

[strikeforce]

Easton and Jackson both happen to have higer standard of living than you or I do.

And I don't see either one of them on this forum whining and complaining that somone else in their work group is shafting them.

So you be the judge. Who has made the right decision?
But don't let the facts or the truth get in your way.

You can remain trapped in your little union world of reliance on a whole group of cowards all you want.
You can degrade me, call me names, or whatever else you like.
But that will not change your status, or where you are going with your head in the sand.

Informer, today I listened to AA's business plan going forward, these are the failed business plan highlights:

1. AA's business plan is highly predicated on the fact that once AA has raped their employees, and it emerges from BK, that those same employees will jump through hoops to save the airline, have a big smile on their face, and just be happy go lucky employees. NOT!

2. That AA will most likely steal "high end" revenue passengers from UA & DL by enticing them with pajamas, sky blue ceiling lites, and brand new airplanes. And, a system where premium passengers will be identified by their first names. NOT!

3. And, that AA intends to hold everyone accountable. NOT!

Then, the most interesting question came from the floor. Q. AA loses lots of premium "high end" revenue passengers because they sit in first class and they hear the F/A's bitching and moaning throughout the flight, and that enviornment drives those passengers away? After dancing around the question for a while, the managing director that filled in for our VP came back and said, 'If your that miserable AA doesn't want you around". I then asked, "well what are you going to do when you have 10K miserable F/A's, 10K miserable mechanics, and 10K pissed off pilots"? He said, "then I guess AA won't be around".

Going back to NO.1 above, AA's business plan will fail because AA and Labor hate each other, and will NEVER have a good working relationship if AA continues to use it's employees as scapegoats for managements failures! In other words, AA doesn't have a plan!

 

[Deleted member 14439]

Informer, today I listened to AA's business plan going forward, these are the failed business plan highlights:

1. AA's business plan is highly predicated on the fact that once AA has raped their employees, and it emerges from BK, that those same employees will jump through hoops to save the airline, have a big smile on their face, and just be happy go lucky employees. NOT!

2. That AA will most likely steal "high end" revenue passengers from UA & DL by enticing them with pajamas, sky blue ceiling lites, and brand new airplanes. And, a system where premium passengers will be identified by their first names. NOT!

3. And, that AA intends to hold everyone accountable. NOT!

Then, the most interesting question came from the floor. Q. AA loses lots of premium "high end" revenue passengers because they sit in first class and they hear the F/A's bitching and moaning throughout the flight, and that enviornment drives those passengers away? After dancing around the question for a while, the managing director that filled in for our VP came back and said, 'If your that miserable AA doesn't want you around". I then asked, "well what are you going to do when you have 10K miserable F/A's, 10K miserable mechanics, and 10K pissed off pilots"? He said, "then I guess AA won't be around".

Going back to NO.1 above, AA's business plan will fail because AA and Labor hate each other, and will NEVER have a good working relationship if AA continues to use it's employees as scapegoats for managements failures! In other words, AA doesn't have a plan!

So that was the response from management? Not at all surprising and indicative of their arrogance. I agree this is a failed business plan already. Guess they will never learn, if your people are not happy then the customer will not be happy.Ah, well so it goes.

 

[Overspeed]

Star Tours-yes, Tea Cups-no, my kids are a little old for that. Would I be better off golfing with management?

Over the past few weeks I've seen many people claim that I've said things I didnt and spin other things I have said.

Here are some things I have said;
"We should have called AA's bluff back in 2003, even if they werent bluffing and had gone BK we would be better off today."

As it is now the industry as a whole is enjoying an advantage over labor that they could have never dreamed possible.

A week before we gave away the store UAL had reached A TA in BK that cut pay by 13% but left most of the contract intact, they actualy got 1% back compared to the temporary court imposed paycut, then we turned around and cut our contract by 25% outside of BK. We lowered the bar. Lets say that we had held the line and rejected the companys demands. Sure maybe they would have filed, well what would we have ended up with? As I said earlier UAL had just come to a TA where they took a 13% paycut, only to be udercut by our 25% paycut outside of BK. So we end up in front of a Judge, UAL had taken their 13% paycut and kept Holidays, Vacation, sick time, IOD time, medical etc etc. We would likely have followed UAL with a 13% paycut as well, but once we undercut the BK process by going all the way to 25% we reset the bar for the whole industry. USAIR had to go back into BK and the rest followed to try and get what we gave AA. None of our competitors had low cost mechanics in OH, OSMs, and with a contracting industry they did not have the opportunity to introduce them in through attrition like AA did, since we gave that concession in 1995. Our competitors would have hade to cut some of their workers pay by around half, and what sort of productivity could they have expected from them? So they really didnt have an option, if they wanted to be able to produce seats at a price comparable to AA they had to outsource.

We are currently the lowest paid mechanics, none of those who preceeded us were at the bottom in compensation when the company asked for more concessions in bk.

If we all had gone BK around the same time we would have had a better arguement at saying the system is flawed and pushing for changes to deregulation, C-11, the RLA or any combination thereof. As it is we find ourselves earning less money today than we did prior to the concessions and the company trying to extend that until at least 2018.

"The greatest threat to our profession is not Foreign Maintenance , its American Airlines."

There will always be maintenance done here in the US. Sure some of the low value work will be sent overseas but in an attempt to keep that work should we all accept less? Some say Yes, some say no. I say NO. Keep it a job worth coming back to,

Some say that if you let jobs go you will never see them come back, well I've seen the opposite, or more precisely I've seen the people come back. The workforce is not static for long. It always shrinks, in order to maintain a staffing level they need to hire workers, so if jobs go away through outsourcing it does not mean that the Junior worker who hits the street has permanently lost his job, (it may mean that the Union has permantly lost some of its dues revenue but is it about the Union treasury or the people?) more than likely he/she will be recalled and that has been the primary reason that Unions pushed for seniority in the workplace. Surpluss labor is nothing new, nor are layoffs, seniority was put in place so the older workers were protected. Everyone who was laid off in Aircraft Maintenance has been offered the opportunity to come back despite the fact that the fleet is 35% smaller. What we have not been able to get back is our wages, Holidays, Vacation, Sick time , IOD, out of pocket medical etc. Some advocate giving up more to save jobs, even though AA has been hiring off the street for nearly a year now. You dont save a job by destroying the pay and benefits that drew us here in the first place. No matter what we give up jobs will be lost when the old planes go away and new ones show up. Some may be okay with taking less, more than likely they are the ones at the bottom who have never been through this process before or are afraid of having to look for a job but they can either get laid off and hope to come back to a good job or make this a crappy one before they get laid off and have nothing to come back to. Maybe their fears are unfounded, maybe they arent but there are no guarantees in life, when you made the decision to go into this industry wasnt it with the expectation that you would enjoy a certain standard of living? Did you think that just because you got your licenece it would be handed to you? You have to be willing to fight for it. That means saying NO to concessions everytime the company threatens you.

We only have a certain amount of input into this process, whether you are a Member or even a Local President or va "small Local". We can vote NO. If it was up to me I would have asked for a release back in August of 2009. But I do not have the authority to do so. The fact is this is the Internationals Contract, not any Locals, not even Tulsa's. Within the committee I had patiently waited for the 7 day labor loan and 1/7th rule issues to get settled before I made a concerted effort to push for release. I made motions to do so as far back as April of 2010 only to be outvoted. Even when the NMB had withdrawn from the process many still did not want to ask for a release, I wanted to request that we ask in time for a Pre-Thankgiving expiration of the 30 day cooling off period, the day after they filed BK was settled upon. We still have not officially asked for a release.

BTW, back in August the NMB (Larry Gibbons) told us one of the reasons why they were pulling out was because they did not feel that further mediation would help and that due to the govermnents fiscal difficulties he did not want to waste any more of their money, yet, since this process began he has been there, hanging out with his buddy Mark Burdette (they both have a conncetion through AIRCON) pretty much every day.

What we need to do is attck the process and we should focus our arguement on the unfairness of our exclusion from section 1167 of the BK code. Airline workers are on the one hand told they can not avail themselves of their economic weapons because of the RLA yet they are not protected from the companys decision to avail themselves of C-11 like other workers who also have their hands tied-Railroad workers. If you work under the NLRA and your contract is abrogated you can do like every other creditors and cease to provide what you were contractually bound to provide. You can strike. If you are a Railroad worker they can not abrogate your contract, they have to follow section 6 of the RLA, however if you are an airline worker you are denied the right to strike that NLRA workers have and are not protected by Sect 1168 like RR workers. Clearly this is an intolerable injustice. It was assumed that since we did not get the protections of the RLA, namely 1167, that we would have the right to strike as if we were under the NLRA, but some Judge decided that we should have niether. This is something that every airline worker needs to be aware of since it will affect them. What the courts have done is tip the scales in favor of stripping airline workers unions of all their economic weapons while adding them to our employers. The exploitation of C-11 provodes no stigma nad has become an accepted business practice that robs Unions of a level playing field. When USAIRWAYS filed there was little doubt that the company was failing, when NWA filed with $1 billion in cash it raised eyebrows but NWA could point not only tpo how competitors used BK to lower costs but how AA, the largest carrier at the time had much lower wages and benefits, they pushed the bar over a little to the right, establishing that an airline need not be broke to use C-11, now AA is pushing it over even more, filing with over $ billion in the bank and retaining its plan to replace most of its aircraft over the next several years leaving them with the newest fleet in the industry, Hostess foods has pushed it over even more recently, filing for c-11 to just go after labor contracts.

C-11 has becaome the means by which companies will simply use the courts to get what they could not get in collective bargaining. Clearly Unions will have no purpose unless challenges are put up against this. If we allow AA to be successful in gutting whats left of our contsracts while they are still taking delivery of new aircarft and have billions in cash then why wouldnt AA's competitors do the same thing AA did? USAIR is in negotiations, UAL comes up next year, so does WN. Why wouldnt they drag out talks for four years like AA then, place an order for hundreds of new aircraft on the books, right next to even more than $4 billion in cash and file BK to go after the labor contracts. While all unions face the prospect of a company imposing terms after negaotiaions have reached an impasse only airline workers face having terms imposed and not being able to legally fight back.

Everyone has the God given right to defend themselves. If we are to survive we must do so, regardless of its legality, so yes, I am saying that if we have terms imposed on us by the courts who are answerable to no one then we should resort to what under these terms are considered to be illegal job actions, non-violent, non-destrctive acts of civil disobedience meant to cause as much disruption to commerce as possible. We should also, as soon as possible make our grievances known to our elected leaders. ask them to avoid putting us in this position by including us in 1167, they allowed the courts to screw us, they can correct it before it gets to the point where working people have to resort to lawlessness in order to protect themselves. This concerns all airline workers so we should all do this, because if we dont you will be next. We failed to do it in 2003, there is no "next time", we have to do it this time, even if it means the liquidation of AA.

Your words have little foundation in fact. They are a rehash of what you have been saying all along however recently the fact that your concepts and beliefs have been proven wrong. We did not get a better deal than the TA, BK was not a threat, and the only money on the table is going to the creditors.

The Tea Cups are awesome at any age.

 

[FWAAA]

Informer, today I listened to AA's business plan going forward, these are the failed business plan highlights:

1. AA's business plan is highly predicated on the fact that once AA has raped their employees, and it emerges from BK, that those same employees will jump through hoops to save the airline, have a big smile on their face, and just be happy go lucky employees. NOT!

US, UA, DL and NW slashed their employee pay and benefits, and yet their employees show up for work every day. Is everything rainbows and unicorns at those airlines? No. But they keep showing up for work. Your post implies that AA is all alone on this front, and the reality is that Arpey spared you from it for nearly nine years.

2. That AA will most likely steal "high end" revenue passengers from UA & DL by enticing them with pajamas, sky blue ceiling lites, and brand new airplanes. And, a system where premium passengers will be identified by their first names. NOT!

If that's how it was presented to you, then AA put the wrong person on the front line. My guess is that you left out some parts. If AA is to steal anything away from UA and DL, it will be with more frequencies on more two-class 70-90 seaters in key business markets. The new 738s and A320s will pay for themselves in fuel savings unless fuel prices tank. Will AA be able to steal away business from UA or DL? Dunno, but the alternative is to wave the white flag.

3. And, that AA intends to hold everyone accountable. NOT!

AA shoud try to hold everyone accountable, but will probably fail.

Then, the most interesting question came from the floor. Q. AA loses lots of premium "high end" revenue passengers because they sit in first class and they hear the F/A's bitching and moaning throughout the flight, and that enviornment drives those passengers away? After dancing around the question for a while, the managing director that filled in for our VP came back and said, 'If your that miserable AA doesn't want you around". I then asked, "well what are you going to do when you have 10K miserable F/A's, 10K miserable mechanics, and 10K pissed off pilots"? He said, "then I guess AA won't be around".

Over the past decade, several people have posted something to the following:

They pay me just enough not to quit and I work just enough to not get fired.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The pay has been just enough not to quit? Then it's been too high. Now that AA's in Ch 11, maybe more will decide that AA doesn't pay them just enough not to quit and will finally put their skills to use for higher pay in another industry.

 

[AA-MRO.COM]

You forgot a few of the things you have said and spun.

"Hopefully AA will be put out of business and we can work for somone willing to pay a fair wage"

"If this T/A were to pass, we would be leaving money on the table"

"The best deal is never reached until the 11th hour of the 29th day"

"Retro is still on the table"

When you turn around how many YES voters are behind you ? From the last vote on the failed T/A I'd say about 33 percent. What are some of your quotes to the 33 percent...
Thank you sir may I have another...
The beatings will comence until moral improves...
Rule number one
the boss is allways right
Rule number two
If the boss is wrong see rule number one

 

[Duke787]

When you turn around how many YES voters are behind you ? From the last vote on the failed T/A I'd say about 33 percent. What are some of your quotes to the 33 percent...
Thank you sir may I have another...
The beatings will comence until moral improves...
Rule number one
the boss is allways right
Rule number two
If the boss is wrong see rule number one

What the 33% is hearing from some of the no voters, "I wish we would have voted in that contract"

What the 33% is saying, "We lost out on over $15k dollars"
"lets not listen to the know nothing "Vote NO" mouth breathers again"

 

[Buck]

When you turn around how many YES voters are behind you ? From the last vote on the failed T/A I'd say about 33 percent. What are some of your quotes to the 33 percent...
Thank you sir may I have another...
The beatings will comence until moral improves...
Rule number one
the boss is allways right
Rule number two
If the boss is wrong see rule number one

Now that bankruptcy has been declared, how many of the 66% would vote no on anything, including the term sheet.

 

[WTFTWU]

What the 33% is hearing from some of the no voters, "I wish we would have voted in that contract"

What the 33% is saying, "We lost out on over $15k dollars"
"lets not listen to the know nothing "Vote NO" mouth breathers again"

I voted no because the ta was filled with cocessions and was very devisive (splitting the over 50 against the under 50 yr olds). It is better to take a stand and fail than to go through life grovelling on your knees.

 

[amt66]

Now that bankruptcy has been declared, how many of the 66% would vote no on anything, including the term sheet.

I'm voting no again!!!!

 

[enough already]

I'm voting no again!!!!

I'll be very surprised if we get the chance to vote... <_<

 

[iluvaa]

I voted yes but this time around I'm voting no on anything that is brought back

 

[TWU informer]

I voted yes but this time around I'm voting no on anything that is brought back

I suspect that I am right there with you and that we will see an even larger NO vote this time around.