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

[767 mechanic]

If overspeed actually revealed who he is then everyone would know that he is in the int or atleast an int stooge. The only people that try and spin things as he has have something more to lose than the everyday Joe on the frontline. When Jim Little said that everything was going to be a roll call vote he was stacking the deck in his favor as usual. The one thing that os does not want to admit is that the real negotiating is done after hours like the ones with cirri,hewitt and fat bastard.

 

[Bob Owens]

What's getting old and stale is Bob preaching to us that we are better off liquidating. Is Bob going to pay my mortgage? Healtchare? College tuition?
Please spare us the "WE SHOULD'VE BEEN PREPARING FOR A STRIKE IN 2003.!


How the hell do you expect people to survive in this economy when they have to pay bills, raise a family, keep the roof over their heads AND still bank tens of thousands of dollars so they may STRIKE one day? I don't need him or anyone telling me that I should prepare for a strike fund when I have to take care of my family. And don't reply that unless we fight for our careers, we will never get the money we deserve...WE ARE DONE! FINITO! GAME OVER!

Where do you suggest the 550 or so mechanics in NY are going to get jobS? Are we all going to the MTA? JetBlue? Delta? SWA? UPS? Where are all these mechanics going to find work, let alone the 4000 or so more that will lose their jobs as a result of bankrupty?

The reality of it all is that are NOT that many jobs out there for ANYONE! So we should sink AA and go reset the clock at another company that most likely will not pay what even we earn now, most likely no pension and similiar healthcare costs just to name a few.

If Bob thinks he is going to be the pied piper and get people to follow him off a cliff, he is sadly mistaken.

At the end of the day, we all need to pay our bills and feed our families, and yes even under the new conditions we will find ourselves working under..

This once proud career has seen its hey day......It's over now, we will never attain what we once thought we would.

Move on or move along!

Then dont complain and just accept the fact that 6 years from now you will have stayed employed but you will be worse off than you are now.

The company is proposing paying you less in 2018 than they were in 2003. They actually want to cut pay by taking away the MRT and more than double what you pay for Medical. Your weekly take home pay will be drastically cut, the Pension, which you gave up Holiday pay, Vacation, sick Time and IOD to pay for will also be frozen or terminated, yet you still would be paying for the pension you no longer accrue because they are not proposing giving any of that stuff back even though our peers at other carriers have it. Just the Holidays and Vaction alone were concessions worth over $4000/year. You may have to cut your take home pay even more in order to get the company contribution to the 401K and unlike any other carrier they would only match your straight time hours, OT earnnings would not be matched. They want to strip Crew Chiefs of CC pay when they work OT, they want to pick the CCs, they want to pick and choose who gets trained and then bid shifts by training, they want to pick who works OT. You are looking at roughly another 20% paycut. By 2018 you wont be able to pay your mortgage or send your kids to college anyway, in the meantime what you pay for Medical Insurance will more than double and the deductables and copays will increase as well. In 2003 when we took the paycuts I was paying $500 a year for Medical Coverage for my family and now its over $3k, with higher copays so I'm paying even more on a reduced paycheck. Next year I will likley opt out altogether and use the wifes plan, even without the concession. If you live on Long Island then you probably saw a similar increase in Property taxes since 2003 as I did, mine went from around $6k in 2003 to around $11.5k , a $5.5k increase, so between just medical and property taxes, costs that are pretty much fixed I've seen an increase of over $8000 on a paycheck thats still 10% less than it was in early 2003, and pretty much everything else has gone up as well. The next six years would be worse than the last under the companys proposal. Are you willing to accept that?

So while our take home pay would plummett thanks to paycuts and higher contributions for medical and the loss of the pension and retiree medical our peers at other carriers have retained a lot of what we lost and their wages are recovering.

Did you start your career at AA? Most of us didnt and many of us took pay cuts when we first got here because we fellt over the long term it would pay off. If AA were to liquidate all those passengers are not going to stay home, the terminals wont stay empty and the planes wont all go to the desert, just like when Pan Am and EAL went away the other carriers expanded and picked up most of the mechanics. The Pan Am guys didnt take much of a hit in pay because they gave concession after concession to keep the place afloat, all they did was lose years they could have been building up seniority in the next place, and I believe the EAL guys went to top pay in less than five years, using the companys projections on labor costs average pay in the industry will be around $42/hr by 2018. So the choice is yours, accept that your wage will eventually decline and what the company charges you for benefits will increase to the point where you can start at the bottom somewhere else with an immediate raise or be willing to tell the company that you would rather see them liquidate than accept what they are demanding.

Sure it sucks starting at the bottom and the longer you are here the harder it would be but look at the numbers. Lets just look at Paid Time Off and break down holidays to its hourly value, lets look at all that is available to us for say a 20 year AA guy .
Here is what a 20 year AA guy has available.
5 sick days=40 hours
5 Holidays at half pay if worked=20 hours
4 weeks vacation=160 hours
So Total PTO available for an AA 20 year guy comes out to 240 hours per year
Lets look at a new hire at post BK UAL
12 sick days= 96hrs
10 holidays at 1.5 x if worked= 120 hours
2 weeks of vacation= 80 hours
Total PTO available at UAL for a new hire 296hrs.
So day one at UAL you would have access to more PTO than you would at AA after 20 years. Yes you would be starting at a wage that may be lower but you need to look at where you would likely be in 2018. By 2018 you could be back at top pay, which would likely be at least $40/hr if AA liquidated (we would no longer be supressing wages across the industry), so your base pay would be around $12k more than if you stayed at AA, yes you would have less vacation but more sick time and Holiday pay. The extra Holiday pay alone would pay for an additional two weeks that you could CS off and still pocket the $12k in pay, in five years at UAL you could accumulate as much sick time as you could in 12 years at AA, in ten years at UAL you could accumulate as much as it would take 22 years at AA.

UAL workers will likely be able to bank all that extra sick time they get to pay for retiree medical like they do at Continental. UAL does screw theiir guys in that they only pay them 75% for the first few days of sick time and charge them for a whole day but AA wants to pay only 60% and charge for a whole day. (UAL give 12 sick days while AA only gives 5) What AA wants you to do is basically contribute to the cost of keeping someone on OT to cover for you, even if they dont. While both deals suck UAL pays more and they give more than double the amount of sick time than what AA is offering.

UAL is by no means the Industry leader either. They ratified their deal after it was announced that AA filed BK.

Look closely at the ask, and look at what other carriers are paying and you will likely come to the same conclusion as me that if the company gets what they want we need to plan a future that does not include AA and if thats the case then the best way to create more opportunities for us as mechanics is to see AA liquidate because that would create a void in the market where other carriers expand and they in turn would need to hire more mechanics. Would it mean more hardships for us now during that "in between jobs" and ramp back to top pay time? Yes, very much so, but we could be looking at around $42 on average in 2018 somewhere else instead of the the future that AA is offering of around $34/hr in 2018 and the highest medical costs in the industry, least amount of PTO, most oppressive workrules and simply a more miserable place than it is today.

AA's business plan is to be "succussful" by making our situation more miserable.

 

[Mr Red]

What's getting old and stale is Bob preaching to us that we are better off liquidating. Is Bob going to pay my mortgage? Healtchare? College tuition?
Please spare us the "WE SHOULD'VE BEEN PREPARING FOR A STRIKE IN 2003.!


How the hell do you expect people to survive in this economy when they have to pay bills, raise a family, keep the roof over their heads AND still bank tens of thousands of dollars so they may STRIKE one day? I don't need him or anyone telling me that I should prepare for a strike fund when I have to take care of my family. And don't reply that unless we fight for our careers, we will never get the money we deserve...WE ARE DONE! FINITO! GAME OVER!

Where do you suggest the 550 or so mechanics in NY are going to get jobS? Are we all going to the MTA? JetBlue? Delta? SWA? UPS? Where are all these mechanics going to find work, let alone the 4000 or so more that will lose their jobs as a result of bankrupty?

The reality of it all is that are NOT that many jobs out there for ANYONE! So we should sink AA and go reset the clock at another company that most likely will not pay what even we earn now, most likely no pension and similiar healthcare costs just to name a few.

If Bob thinks he is going to be the pied piper and get people to follow him off a cliff, he is sadly mistaken.

At the end of the day, we all need to pay our bills and feed our families, and yes even under the new conditions we will find ourselves working under..

This once proud career has seen its hey day......It's over now, we will never attain what we once thought we would.

Move on or move along!

There will always be jobs for people that will accept bottom of the barrel,And yes there are a lot of aviation jobs around the country !You want to talk about healthcare that since 2003 has went from bad to terrible.College fund what college fund that dried up in 2003.A lot of us think 10 years of getting F'd is enough.

 

[TWU informer]

Then dont complain and just accept the fact that 6 years from now you will have stayed employed but you will be worse off than you are now.

The company is proposing paying you less in 2018 than they were in 2003. They actually want to cut pay by taking away the MRT and more than double what you pay for Medical. Your weekly take home pay will be drastically cut, the Pension, which you gave up Holiday pay, Vacation, sick Time and IOD to pay for will also be frozen, yet you still would be paying for the pension you no longer accrue because they are not proposing giving any of that stuff back even though our peers at other carriers have it. Just the Holidays and Vaction alone were concessions worth over $4000/year. You may have to cut your take home pay even more in order to get the company contribution to the 401K and unlike any other carrier they would only match your straight time hours, OT earnnings would not be matched. They want to strip Crew Chiefs of CC pay when they work OT, they want to pick the CCs, they want to pick and choose who gets trained and then bid shifts by training, they want to pick who works OT. You are looking at roughly another 20% paycut. By 2018 you wont be able to pay your mortgage or send your kids to college anyway, in the meantime what you pay for Medical Insurance will more than double and the deductables and copays will increase as well. In 2003 when we took the paycuts I was paying $500 a year for Medical Coverage for my family and now its over $3k, with higher copays so I'm paying even more on a reduced paycheck. Next year I will likley opt out altogether and use the wifes plan, even without the concession. If you live on Long Island then you probably saw a similar increase in Property taxes since 2003 as I did, mine went from around $6k in 2003 to around $11.5k , a $5.5k increase, so between just medical and property taxes, costs that are pretty much fixed I've seen an increase of over $8000 on a paycheck thats still 10% less than it was in early 2003, and pretty much everything else has gone up as well. The next six years would be worse than the last under the companys proposal. Are you willing to accept that?

So while our take home pay would plummett thanks to paycuts and higher contributions for medical and the loss of the pension and retiree medical our peers at other carriers have retained a lot of what we lost and their wages are recovering.

Did you start your career at AA? Most of us didnt and many of us took pay cuts when we first got here because we fellt over the long term it would pay off. If AA were to liquidate all those passengers are not going to stay home, the terminals wont stay empty and the planes wont all go to the desert, just like when Pan Am and EAL went away the other carriers expanded and picked up most of the mechanics. The Pan Am guys didnt take much of a hit in pay because they gave concession after concession to keep the place afloat, all they did was lose years they could have been building up seniority in the next place, and I believe the EAL guys went to top pay in less than five years, using the companys projections on labor costs average pay in the industry will be around $42/hr by 2018. So the choice is yours, accept that your wage will eventually decline and what the company charges you for benefits will increase to the point where you can start at the bottom somewhere else with an immediate raise or be willing to tell the company that you would rather see them liquidate than accept what they are demanding.

Sure it sucks starting at the bottom and the longer you are here the harder it would be but look at the numbers. Lets just look at Paid Time Off and break down holidays to its hourly value, lets look at all that is available to us for say a 20 year AA guy and not take into account the difference in wages.
Here is what a 20 year AA guy has available.
5 sick days=40 hours
5 Holidays at half pay if worked=20 hours
4 weeks vacation=160 hours
So Total PTO available for an AA 20 year guy comes out to 240 hours per year
Lets look at a new hire at post BK UAL
12 sick days= 96hrs
10 holidays at 1.5 x if worked= 120 hours
2 weeks of vacation= 80 hours
Total PTO available at UAL for a new hire 296hrs.
So day one at UAL you would have access to more PTO than you would at AA after 20 years. Yes you would be starting at a wage that may be lower but you need to look at where you would likely be in 2018.

UAL workers will likely be able to bank all that extra sick time they get to pay for retiree medical like they do at Continental. UAL does screw theiir guys in that they only pay them 75% for the first few days of sick time and charge them for a whole day but AA wants to pay only 60% and charge for a whole day. What AA wants you to do is basically contribute to the cost of keeping someone on OT to cover for you, even if they dont. While both deals suck UAL pays more and they give more than double the amount of sick time than what AA is offering.


Look closely at the ask, and look at what other carriers are paying and you will likely come to the same conclusion as me that if the company gets what they want we need to plan a future that does not include AA and if thats the case then the best way to create more opportunities for us as mechanics is to see AA liquidate because that would create a void in the market where other carriers expand and they in turn would need to hire more mechanics. Would it mean more hardships for us now during that "in between jobs" and ramp back to top pay time? Yes, very much so, but we could be looking at around $42 on average in 2018 somewhere else instead of the the future that AA is offering of around $34/hr in 2018 and the highest medical costs in the industry, least amount of PTO, most oppressive workrules and simply a more miserable place than it is today.

Is there a plan?
Or just complaining about what is about to happen?

It is oh so easy to point out the faults, but a ture leader has a solution right after he points out the problems.

Tulsa TWU stooges keep claiming they cannot give us information because it would jeopardize the strategy they have. I nearly choke on my chicken everytime I hear them say it.

Is there a plan Bob? Does anyone have a plan?

 

[limit]

Thats all fine Bob,but let me point something out.
Your Plan this time is to :
Liquidate AA = no paycheck . A fact and a terminal action.

A would and a could if hired by another carrier,which is a promise.

Who is making this promise Bob? you ,or UA?

Because if its UA or anyone else making that promise for employment, I will take it, even if its just a promise from another carrier.

But if its just you Bob making assumptions again,frankly no,hell no.

 

[strikeforce]

Then dont complain and just accept the fact that 6 years from now you will have stayed employed but you will be worse off than you are now.

While agree with your entire post, most of our members will NOT walk. Hopeful is right, families are cash strapped and most of our members have to work lots of OT or CS's to survive. AA knows that......that's probably a stat they will not provide you. That's also one of the reasons why the place will burn down everytime the company threatens to place limits on the CS policy. Although the company has threatened to change the CS policy, they know damn well our members will fight like hell to preserve the 3 doubles per week. This is the only way to make extra cash. It's really unfortunate that WE will fight to preserve a company carrot instead of our basis for working at AA.....to make enough money to live a comfortable life and to make sure our children have the best education, clothes, cars and eventually a home. Instead WE accept lower pay, less benefits and a reduced pension. How can people possibly look at their children and tell them that this the best I can do for you. Oh, and btw....I'll never be able to have a relationship with you because I have to live at AA in order to survive. How pathetic is that?? Real pathetic in my eyes! I've cheated my kids out a good education by accepting 200K less over 9 years, and I'm certainly NOT going to give them more voluntarily. I have two choices.....stick around and cheat my kids of other basic necessities or find other employment.....there are some good opprotunities out there.....spend time looking, my friend!

 

[AANOTOK]

Maybe it's time I swallow my pride and "restructure". Seems to be OK the right thing to do for corporate America. My family is my corporation and for the them to succeed I must start slashing. I think I will start with the "unsecured creditors". <_<

 

[Mr Red]

Is there a plan?
Or just complaining about what is about to happen?

It is oh so easy to point out the faults, but a ture leader has a solution right after he points out the problems.

Tulsa TWU stooges keep claiming they cannot give us information because it would jeopardize the strategy they have. I nearly choke on my chicken everytime I hear them say it.

Is there a plan Bob? Does anyone have a plan?

What happened to the working together plan.

 

[Bob Owens]

Thats all fine Bob,but let me point something out.
Your Plan this time is to :
Liquidate AA = no paycheck . A fact and a terminal action.

A would and a could if hired by another carrier,which is a promise.

Who is making this promise Bob? you ,or UA?

Because if its UA or anyone else making that promise for employment, I will take it, even if its just a promise from another carrier.

But if its just you Bob making assumptions again,frankly no,hell no.

No promises, just observations based on whats happened in the past, no plan to liquidate AA either, thats not our call anyway, only to make it clear that under their ASK liquidation is not the worst case scenario, and like all scenarios they are based on assumptions. If you think that $34/hr in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 (why wouldnt they stretch out negotiations then as well?) is better than liquidation then fine but to me the threat that they could liquidate if we dont agree carries absolutely no weight because from what I see if they did liquidate it would provide more opportunities for more people. We would probably be better off in 2018 somewhere else than than here after seeing what they are offering. So Limit, whats your limit? At what point would you say "what you are asking is unreasonable and enough is enough, if you need this to stay in business then perhaps you should not be in business"?

Here in NY if they were to Liquidate we would get Unemployment Insurance pay and healthcare for our kids from the state for many months. Since 2003 I've seen many people leave on their own, only saw one come back. There are jobs out there even in this economy for people who can fix things and are willing to work.

 

[Mr Red]

No promises, just observations based on whats happened in the past, no plan to liquidate AA either, thats not our call anyway, only to make it clear that under their ASK liquidation is not the worst case scenario, and like all scenarios they are based on assumptions. If you think that $34/hr in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 (why wouldnt they stretch out negotiations then as well?) is better than liquidation then fine but to me the threat that they could liquidate if we dont agree carries absolutely no weight because from what I see if they did liquidate it would provide more opportunities for more people. We would probably be better off in 2018 somewhere else than than here after seeing what they are offering. So Limit, whats your limit? At what point would you say "what you are asking is unreasonable and enough is enough, if you need this to stay in business then perhaps you should not be in business"?

Here in NY if they were to Liquidate we would get Unemployment Insurance pay and healthcare for our kids from the state for many months. Since 2003 I've seen many people leave on their own, only saw one come back. There are jobs out there even in this economy for people who can fix things and are willing to work.

It would be nice if the Mechs that do the work would all bale and leave all the F-STICKS and BUMS the twu has to defend every year !! I can only dream !

 

[Bob Owens]

While agree with your entire post, most of our members will NOT walk. Hopeful is right, families are cash strapped and most of our members have to work lots of OT or CS's to survive. AA knows that......that's probably a stat they will not provide you. That's also one of the reasons why the place will burn down everytime the company threatens to place limits on the CS policy. Although the company has threatened to change the CS policy, they know damn well our members will fight like hell to preserve the 3 doubles per week. This is the only way to make extra cash. It's really unfortunate that WE will fight to preserve a company carrot instead of our basis for working at AA.....to make enough money to live a comfortable life and to make sure our children have the best education, clothes, cars and eventually a home. Instead WE accept lower pay, less benefits and a reduced pension. How can people possibly look at their children and tell them that this the best I can do for you. Oh, and btw....I'll never be able to have a relationship with you because I have to live at AA in order to survive. How pathetic is that?? Real pathetic in my eyes! I've cheated my kids out a good education by accepting 200K less over 9 years, and I'm certainly NOT going to give them more voluntarily. I have two choices.....stick around and cheat my kids of other basic necessities or find other employment.....there are some good opprotunities out there.....spend time looking, my friend!

Last week I stopped by JFK and told the guys that from what I've seen of AAs plans for the future that they need to plan a future that does not include AA. $34/hr in 2018!!!???

Anyone with less than 20 years should seriously consider going somewhere else, maybe thats what the company wants because from what I've read AA has been going to A&P schools claiming that they will be hiring kids right out of school with no experience. I think they figure the older people wont go because they suffer from a form of Stockholm Syndrome, and no matter how bad they make it they will still produce and the younger kids will spend thier careers as we did, assuming that eventually it will get better.

 

[limit]

No promises, just observations based on whats happened in the past, no plan to liquidate AA either, thats not our call anyway, only to make it clear that under their ASK liquidation is not the worst case scenario, and like all scenarios they are based on assumptions. If you think that $34/hr in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 (why wouldnt they stretch out negotiations then as well?) is better than liquidation then fine but to me the threat that they could liquidate if we dont agree carries absolutely no weight because from what I see if they did liquidate it would provide more opportunities for more people we would probably be better off in 2018 somewhere else than than here after seeing what they are offering. So Limit, whats your limit? At what point would you say "what you are asking is unreasonable and enough is enough, if you need this to stay in business then perhaps you should not be in business"?

We are all free to walk across the ramp and find new employment.
This is what I will do when the time comes.
But I will find and secure employment first ,before I go.

"what you are asking is unreasonable and enough is enough, if you need this to stay in business then perhaps you should not be in business"?

So that we are clear,are you saying that we should wildcat and put them out of business?
How exactly would we tell them they should not be in business?

You have to realize here I am not disagreeing with you on the analysis of the situation, I just fail to see the logic in the path you are proposing.

 

[Buck]

If overspeed actually revealed who he is then everyone would know that he is in the int or atleast an int stooge. The only people that try and spin things as he has have something more to lose than the everyday Joe on the frontline. When Jim Little said that everything was going to be a roll call vote he was stacking the deck in his favor as usual. The one thing that os does not want to admit is that the real negotiating is done after hours like the ones with cirri,hewitt and fat bastard.

You cannot hide behind an alias and ask someone to break theirs.....

 

[DallasConehead]

I think someone is smoking crack if he thinks C7 is the best option. Its a fools errand to shoot and kill the cow that provides the milk. The NO Contingent led by BO already cost me at least 17k and counting. And all you guys that speculate they would have filed anyway? Well how about I speculate they wouldn’t have. In which case my pension would still be accruing. How about the quintessential TWU mantra, "dude if you don't like it, go elsewhere" quit trying to "save the profession", me and my family are OK without your help!!! Call me a stooge if you want but at least I’m not an idiot.

 

[Chuck Schalk]

I think someone is smoking crack if he thinks C7 is the best option. Its a fools errand to shoot and kill the cow that provides the milk. The NO Contingent led by BO already cost me at least 17k and counting. And all you guys that speculate they would have filed anyway? Well how about I speculate they wouldn’t have. In which case my pension would still be accruing. How about the quintessential TWU mantra, "dude if you don't like it, go elsewhere" quit trying to "save the profession", me and my family are OK without your help!!! Call me a stooge if you want but at least I’m not an idiot.

You did not lose 17K, it was only a promise that never would have came to be..........bankruptcy was their destiny, no other way to break all contracts.