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

[AA89]

No one can say for sure what our prospects would look like had we approved the TA 2 years ago. All we know for sure is that we turned down some money and less drastic cuts than we will get in BK. Had all 3 unions agreed to sign what the company was offering its as likely as not that we would at least have limped along for another few years. To say otherwise is a guess.

 

[Bob Owens]

Seems those that voted yes and ratified their T/A's (MOC Techs and Simulator Techs) are fairing better than those that did not.

SO what is you basis for the claim that voting YES would have not made one difference?

Or is this more emotional denial that we made a error in judgement, so you make this claim up?

Well those guys already lost the match for the retiree medical, maybe for them it was good deal but one of my members who was ex EAL said he has over $30000 in there. So as of today those funds are still in his account and we have quite a few guys that came over from EAL, Pan Am etc hat were well beyond 30 when they got here and have been paying into it for 20 years.

What some seem to forget is all the other concessions that were in the TA that did not affect the mcts ( sim techs never voted on a TA) such as higher ASMs, SMAs, the ability to sell off up to 25 % of the operation in any 12 month period, ,new hires on the 401k and more. Anyone who thinks that the company filed because of maintenance is nuts. Some of this stuff they are going for now, well if they already had that they would be going for 20 % of what was left. Keep in mind that AA is not just demanding a 20% cut in labor costs, they are demanding that we cut maintenance costs by 20%. That's why they are calling for a reduction in headcount of over 4000 from M&R. They subtract what they estimate it would cost to outsource the work.

If the TA had passed the company would have claimed that since AFW fell below the 25% threshold that closing AFW would not count towards the 20% figure because they could have done that anyway and like the 757s going to Timco said "Grieve it".

Every carrier that went into BK could point at AA, the largest carrier at the time, and say, "hey, they are bigger than us and pay less than us". We are the only ones who are going into the industry at the bottom. We got there by saying Yes in 2003 and by not demanding to be released when we rejected the TA nearly two years ago. Do I regret voting No? We do not control the process but we do control how we vote. Should we let those who drove us to the bottom get their way by giving in? For me the answer is No.

 

[TWU informer]

My lhttp://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2012/03/american-airlines-likely-will.html

 

[AA89]

Well those guys already lost the match for the retiree medical, maybe for them it was good deal but one of my members who was ex EAL said he has over $30000 in there. So as of today those funds are still in his account and we have quite a few guys that came over from EAL, Pan Am etc hat were well beyond 30 when they got here and have been paying into it for 20 years.

What some seem to forget is all the other concessions that were in the TA that did not affect the mcts ( sim techs never voted on a TA) such as higher ASMs, SMAs, the ability to sell off up to 25 % of the operation in any 12 month period, ,new hires on the 401k and more. Anyone who thinks that the company filed because of maintenance is nuts. Some of this stuff they are going for now, well if they already had that they would be going for 20 % of what was left. Keep in mind that AA is not just demanding a 20% cut in labor costs, they are demanding that we cut maintenance costs by 20%. That's why they are calling for a reduction in headcount of over 4000 from M&R. They subtract what they estimate it would cost to outsource the work.

If the TA had passed the company would have claimed that since AFW fell below the 25% threshold that closing AFW would not count towards the 20% figure because they could have done that anyway and like the 757s going to Timco said "Grieve it".

Every carrier that went into BK could point at AA, the largest carrier at the time, and say, "hey, they are bigger than us and pay less than us". We are the only ones who are going into the industry at the bottom. We got there by saying Yes in 2003 and by not demanding to be released when we rejected the TA nearly two years ago. Do I regret voting No? We do not control the process but we do control how we vote. Should we let those who drove us to the bottom get their way by giving in? For me the answer is No.

More guessing about what the company would have done had we agreed to the TA. Maybe they would have filed anyway and gone after everything you say and taken one of my children too. Who knows??
I doubt the NMB board would have released us after the first TA. Seems kinda early to me.
It is valient to want to fight with both hands tied behind your back but you have to know you aren't going to win the fight. The deck is stacked against us and I think if most guys thought breaking it off in the company's ass would improve things we would do it.

 

[Chuck Schalk]

Putting the last pre-bankruptcy proposal to vote would be a little or than symbolic at this point.

If the vote was large percentage yes, and then the company abbrogates and force feeds us much worse via court, the members might be more inclined after that to begin what should have been started by labor along time ago.

Beat the hornets nest so to speak.

I have seen near riots over CS rule changes, TV issues, Lap tops ...etc but a contract that will kill our careers? Cricket......cricket.... we cant blame no one but ourselves for that

With that said, I always heard about the power of the TWU, AFL/CIO, Transport trades, and TWU political affiliations.......
where is it in our hour of real need?

We are a concessionary ship floating away with all critics.

You are part of the solution or part of the problem......choose which one we all are

 

[Chuck Schalk]

More guessing about what the company would have done had we agreed to the TA. Maybe they would have filed anyway and gone after everything you say and taken one of my children too. Who knows??
I doubt the NMB board would have released us after the first TA. Seems kinda early to me.
It is valient to want to fight with both hands tied behind your back but you have to know you aren't going to win the fight. The deck is stacked against us and I think if most guys thought breaking it off in the company's ass would improve things we would do it.

hands are tied behind the back because talk is cheap and chest pounding is friverless. If you want to step into the fight arena that would mean stepping up from the leaders of the union on down to workers on the floor. Words have been are only boo factor while the company guts our contract. Go big or go home. We choose to go home. You will not get any results sitting on the sidelines and yelling from the stands. The only way to push for change is to force the hand and we choose as a union to be critics and submissives.

 

[Bob Owens]

I see you're new here, so I'm guessing that you haven't read all that many posts on this website over the past nine and a half years. I refute a lot of what Owens posts here and I'm no "TWU minion." Too much of what Owens posts here is complete ignorant nonsense. Like last year when he insisted that UA spent 13% of their total expenditures in 2007 just on outsourced maintenance. 13% of UA's 2007 expenses would have been $2.5 billion. Eventually, he emailed me a poorly designed .pdf that UA gave its employees that combined outsourced maintenance with some other categories of spending that, if misread by someone too eager to believe that outsourcing was more expensive, could be interpreted to say that UA's second third largest expense in 2007 (after fuel and wages) was outsourced maintenance expense. In an effort to get Owens to focus on facts, I point out his shortcomings. And I'll keep doing it until AA's mechanics figure out how to persuasively negotiate for higher pay (something the worthless union is not very good at).

Nice spin, you left out that I didn't claim UAL spent 13% on outsourcing, I wrote that UAL claimed they spent 13% , and sent you the document that they presented when they made the claim. The fact is you do not know exactly what's included and what the breakdown is either. Can you tell us how much UAL spent on outsourced maintenance?

Did you ever answer my question from a few weeks back in regards to 1167?

 

[Bob Owens]

More guessing about what the company would have done had we agreed to the TA. Maybe they would have filed anyway and gone after everything you say and taken one of my children too. Who knows??
I doubt the NMB board would have released us after the first TA. Seems kinda early to me.
It is valient to want to fight with both hands tied behind your back but you have to know you aren't going to win the fight. The deck is stacked against us and I think if most guys thought breaking it off in the company's ass would improve things we would do it.

Early? We were already several years into negotiations. I don't know of any other negotiations where after rejection of the TA and the NMB breaking off mediation that the parties were not released.

 

[AA89]

hands are tied behind the back because talk is cheap and chest pounding is friverless. If you want to step into the fight arena that would mean stepping up from the leaders of the union on down to workers on the floor. Words have been are only boo factor while the company guts our contract. Go big or go home. We choose to go home. You will not get any results sitting on the sidelines and yelling from the stands. The only way to push for change is to force the hand and we choose as a union to be critics and submissives.

A lot of the members are ok with the status quo. We have a union with un-elected,un-touchable representatives driving the bus. When those of us that are not ok with the leadership have tried to change representation we were shafted with the inclusion of ineligable people being counted.
When we do negotiate with the company, it drags on and on and the NMB plays along. Being released was not even close more than likely.
An illegal strike would never fly (probably not an authorized strike either).
When the airline doesn't get what is wants it files BK.
All of these things tie our hands and when our bus drivers are more concerned with quantity than quality who is going to lead us from the sidelines and how many would follow?

 

[AA89]

Early? We were already several years into negotiations. I don't know of any other negotiations where after rejection of the TA and the NMB breaking off mediation that the parties were not released.

Is there a time limit on negotiations? If you know for a fact that the NMB normally calls off negotiations after one failed TA then please provide an example or two and I will stand corrected. We were still negotiating for some reason.

 

[Bob Owens]

No one can say for sure what our prospects would look like had we approved the TA 2 years ago. All we know for sure is that we turned down some money and less drastic cuts than we will get in BK. Had all 3 unions agreed to sign what the company was offering its as likely as not that we would at least have limped along for another few years. To say otherwise is a guess.

Well we know this, the company said a 20% cut across everything. So whatever cuts we gave back then would not count now, such as retiree medical. There are few things that we have in our contract that could be considered onerous because we are industry lagging in pretty much every thing else. What we do have is our pension and retiree medical. We also have in house OH, but still we have not been presented with any proof that at the end of the day it would be less costly if we outsourced it, and even if at this time they claimed it was they could not do it tomorrow, it would take a couple of years because as you know the places where they would be sending it to are having trouble keeping people, making the work they already have enough of a challenge. I think the companys main objective here isnt to actually send out 50% of the work, they want to have clear language that allows them to so they can use outsourcing as a threat to increase productivity.

Maintenence is particularly hard hit by this 20% figure because the company inflated their maintenence costs over the last few years. We are the only group to be hiring off the street, they started a bunch of mods and are trying to catch up on maintenence they had put off years earlier, even outsourcing the 757s added to the figure making our 20% disproportional to other groups, why the ask for maintenence was around $60 million higher for us than fleet. Another problem with the ask is that as new aircraft come on line and old aircraft leave our headcount will diminish as well as other costs, none of which we get credit for. The simplest way I can put this is lets say under normal circumstances they spent $750 million on maintenence, but do to all the extra stuff they decided to do over the last few years they recently spent $1 billion , the extra $250 million being one time expenses that would niot reoccur such as winglets and refurbishing the cabins .They are telling us we have to come up with $200 million, based on 20% of a Billion instead of 20% of $750 million which would be $150 million. So in a few years their actual maint costs once the new planes come in would be a lot more than 20% lower than they are today.

 

[odie01]

Well we know this, the company said a 20% cut across everything. So whatever cuts we gave back then would not count now, such as retiree medical. There are few things that we have in our contract that could be considered onerous because we are industry lagging in pretty much every thing else. What we do have is our pension and retiree medical. We also have in house OH, but still we have not been presented with any proof that at the end of the day it would be less costly if we outsourced it, and even if at this time they claimed it was they could not do it tomorrow, it would take a couple of years because as you know the places where they would be sending it to are having trouble keeping people, making the work they already have enough of a challenge. I think the companys main objective here isnt to actually send out 50% of the work, they want to have clear language that allows them to so they can use outsourcing as a threat to increase productivity.

Maintenence is particularly hard hit by this 20% figure because the company inflated their maintenence costs over the last few years. We are the only group to be hiring off the street, they started a bunch of mods and are trying to catch up on maintenence they had put off years earlier, even outsourcing the 757s added to the figure making our 20% disproportional to other groups, why the ask for maintenence was around $60 million higher for us than fleet. Another problem with the ask is that as new aircraft come on line and old aircraft leave our headcount will diminish as well as other costs, none of which we get credit for. The simplest way I can put this is lets say under normal circumstances they spent $750 million on maintenence, but do to all the extra stuff they decided to do over the last few years they recently spent $1 billion , the extra $250 million being one time expenses that would niot reoccur such as winglets and refurbishing the cabins .They are telling us we have to come up with $200 million, based on 20% of a Billion instead of 20% of $750 million which would be $150 million. So in a few years their actual maint costs once the new planes come in would be a lot more than 20% lower than they are today.

More dock space lost for our planes? Is Aeroman San Salvidor included?

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Aveos+bankruptcy+filing+comes+blue/6327601/story.html

Will Obamer do this for us

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/quebec-threatens-to-sue-air-canada-ottawa-over-aveos-layoffs/article2376476/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Politics&utm_content=2376476

 

[AA89]

Damn smartphone...... B)

 

[Overspeed]

More dock space lost for our planes? Is Aeroman San Salvidor included?

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Aveos+bankruptcy+filing+comes+blue/6327601/story.html

Will Obamer do this for us

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/quebec-threatens-to-sue-air-canada-ottawa-over-aveos-layoffs/article2376476/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Politics&utm_content=2376476

No Aeroman is not included. I spoke to an IAMAW rep a while back and when the former ACTS became AVEOS and bought Aeroman they were concerned about jobs being lost in Canada. Aeroman announced an expansion of their narrow body facilities and plans to add wide body capacity.

http://www.centralamericadata.com/en/article/home/New_hangar_for_aircraft_maintenance_at_El_Salvadors_Aeroman_facilities

Could this be that giant sucking sound of jobs going south that Perot was talking about?

 

[Overspeed]

Early? We were already several years into negotiations. I don't know of any other negotiations where after rejection of the TA and the NMB breaking off mediation that the parties were not released.

What? Did you not know that the NMB has the final call on whether to release or not? Did you not have an plan for the end game? Was release your only leverage? Did you not think about all the angles? Don't you think you should have thought of all this before recommending a no vote. The 11th hour has come and gone and now is 1AM and you are still arguing about what should have happened. Doesn't matter now does it? We are screwed and all the would've, could've, and should've doesn't matter.

Keep swinging Bob but I hope you have your head gear on, your a lightweight and the law is going to hit you like Butterbean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJT99suKerg