Poll for AMTS

Do you feel the TWU saved jobs or destroyed our careers?

  • They saved Jobs

    Votes: 1 2.0%
  • They destroyed our careers

    Votes: 4 8.2%
  • They saved jobs but at the price of destroying our careers

    Votes: 10 20.4%
  • They didnt save jobs and they destroyed our careers

    Votes: 34 69.4%

  • Total voters
    49

Bob Owens

Veteran
Sep 9, 2002
14,274
6,112
We hear Overspeed and his cronies often say how even though we are at the bottom of the industry, have inferior workrules and benefits that the TWU has done a great job for AMTs because they claim that our sacrifices saved jobs. How do you feel? Do you feel that they saved our jobs or our careers?

There is no denying that AA employs more mechanics than any other airline, but is volume a substitute for quality? Is the higher volume due solely to the very low cost, if so cant workers sell themselves cheaply without paying a union to do it for them? Walmart employs more workers than any other, should Walmart be praised as an employer and should all their transgressions be overlooked because they employ more workers than anyone else?
 
The TWU may have saved an "individual" his/her job, but the headcount of jobs has still been reduced. Yes, there may be more in-house maintenance, but at the expense of the pay and benefits of the profession. No matter how you calculate the TWU is not successful. And neither is any other union for that matter. If 1000 retire instead of 1000 being laid-off, in the end 1000 jobs are still gone.
 
The TWU may have saved an "individual" his/her job, but the headcount of jobs has still been reduced. Yes, there may be more in-house maintenance, but at the expense of the pay and benefits of the profession. No matter how you calculate the TWU is not successful. And neither is any other union for that matter. If 1000 retire instead of 1000 being laid-off, in the end 1000 jobs are still gone.

The arguement put forth by Don, Overspeed etal, is that if not for the concessions many more jobs would have been lost, however during negotiations the company shared documents with the union that said that although there is plenty of capacity out there to do WB OH, that "Capacity is tight" as far as NB OH. MD-80 NB capacity would be even scarcer due to the fact AA owns most of the MD-80s that fly in the US. They knew this even as they pushed this concessionary deal that would give AA an extra six years to shop around for NB capacity.

I feel that Don and OS are wrong and that even if we had industry standard wages MD-80 OH would still be done in house because they had no place to send it, if they did they would have had to pay a premium negating the savings. The really sad part is not only did we agree to super low wages but we also agreed to allow the company to outsource all new work and we got rid of system protection, so even with the low wages we have no guarantee that as the MD-80s leave that we will get the OH on the replacement aircraft.

Another thing to consider is the trend is to bring work back in house. UAL just started building a new hangar in EWR and another one in IAD, where will they get mechanics? Probably from AA. I was also told that Deltas CEO recently addressed a meeting of mechanics and declared that the savings they expected from outsourcing have not materialized and they too were looking to insource more work, that could be why despite us rollong over again they just gave their mechanics another raise, bringing them up to $38.50/hr.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Doesn't really matter one way or the other. Reducing wages and benefits to keep work in-house is NOT success. And allowing work to be outsourced for higher pay and benefits is not success. But reducing wages and benefits while allowing increased outsourcing has to be the ultimate in FAILURE.....that is the TWU.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 4 people
I don't know if they destroyed your careers or not, but they make it harder for us at other carriers to get increases and raise the bar.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
I don't know if they destroyed your careers or not, but they make it harder for us at other carriers to get increases and raise the bar.

And your company and union has set the bar for outsourced maintenance and foreign outsourcing, making it harder for other unions to keep jobs in house and/or in the United States. For decades they have outsourced, not just since 911. And in all those decades how hard did you fight to to where we were with in-house maintenance? Not very hard, you got your raised and kept your mouth shut. But now after all these DECADES when we are doing bad you are here to act as our savior. GTFOH.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3 people
And your company and union has set the bar for outsourced maintenance and foreign outsourcing, making it harder for other unions to keep jobs in house and/or in the United States. For decades they have outsourced, not just since 911. And in all those decades how hard did you fight to to where we were with in-house maintenance? Not very hard, you got your raised and kept your mouth shut. But now after all these DECADES when we are doing bad you are here to act as our savior. GTFOH.

Who is left doing their own overhaul? AA and shrinking. Don't throw stones. AA is guilty of many things the other airlines have been doing for years.
 
And your company and union has set the bar for outsourced maintenance and foreign outsourcing, making it harder for other unions to keep jobs in house and/or in the United States. For decades they have outsourced, not just since 911. And in all those decades how hard did you fight to to where we were with in-house maintenance? Not very hard, you got your raised and kept your mouth shut. But now after all these DECADES when we are doing bad you are here to act as our savior. GTFOH.
I haven't been at SWA for decades and AMFA hasn't been at SWA for decades.
Swa has had the same business model for decades and No union here has ever told SWA how to run the company.
Same model when the IAM was here, same model when the IBT was here.
When it comes to foreign outsourcing, the IBT allowed work to be outsourced to Canada in direct conflict with our contract language.
This set precedent to allow work to be outsourced to foreign countries.
The company infomed us they were going to do it weather we wanted them to do it or not.
So we negotiated hard limits on it (4 lines, and to only one place) we also got more job protections and an agreement to add a forth heavy line in Dallas.
Also the work going to El Salvador was already outsourced work.
You can blame all your problems on SWA business model if you want, but don't try and blame me or my union because you don't know what you are talking about.
We negotiated to have a AMFA representative whose whole job is to track all outsourcing this company does.
We have won dozens of grievances and awards on outsourcing since AMFA got here and hold their feet to fire constantly.
So don't sit there and say we keep our mouths shut about outsourcing.
We battle every day.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
AMFA has in fact brought more maint in house, kept more maint in house, as well as brought back more maint in house thru arbitrations, grievences, and nego's with the co. than any other union has at SWA. AMFA's been here aprox 10 years and has also fought 10x's the amount of grievences than the teamsters. Teamsters were here for over 25ish years (I think). They were the ones that had language that allowed SWA to start outsoursing out of the USA. They are also the ones that did all the "behind closed door deals". The IAM was representive for the rest of the time remaining.
SWA has always outsourced a higher percentile than 50%. The company has always said that they will pay us leading wages as long as they continue to run lean. We don't mind lean as this allows for overtime, no lay-offs, ect... Now SWA is hiring for the 4th line coming in July. AMFA and co also discussed and brought in current mod line and there will be more mods in the future. Adding maint to MCO and ALT soon. With the purchase of AT has allowed this to happend. If AMFA had not installed language for the added lines of maint then you better believe they all would have been sent out to be done. I still love it how some out here still claim SWA only has 3 lines of maint. Do your homwork folks. We have numerous lines of maint thru-out our system. The 3 lines everyone speaks of is just our 3 heavy lines, soon to be 4 heavy lines in Dallas.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
And your company and union has set the bar for outsourced maintenance and foreign outsourcing, making it harder for other unions to keep jobs in house and/or in the United States. For decades they have outsourced, not just since 911. And in all those decades how hard did you fight to to where we were with in-house maintenance? Not very hard, you got your raised and kept your mouth shut. But now after all these DECADES when we are doing bad you are here to act as our savior. GTFOH.

Prior to 9-11 who was the leader among the legacies in outsourcing? AA was, and not only that but we were the only legacy with OSMs, the first to give away R&D and DeIcing, all of which drove our ratio of A&Ps lower and lower and lower. It took 9-11 and bankruptcy filings for others to surpass AA in outsourcing but nobody surpassed the TWU in concessions, 2.5 days of holiday pay for working 10 holidays, one week of vacation for the first five years and one week less for the next 20 years, five sick days, no double time, straight time pay for working OT in training.Sure now AA has more mechanics but thats only because they effectively get them for free. By selling our labor so cheaply AA gets thousands of mechanics labor for free compared to what other airlines pay for mechanics labor. For every 50 mechanics that lost a week of vacation AA gets a mechanic for free, for every 25 mechanics that lost Holidays they get a mechanic for free, for every five mechanics that work for 20% less than other mechanics they get a mechanic for free.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 7 people
Per the vote results, you guys should have aprox 78-80% AMFA cards signed by now. LOL
 
They have destroyed my career, And the presidence they have set, will deeply effect compensations for others,.....they are the worst case scenerio of what a Union should be......period.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 people