Working in overhaul to, and sick of hearing this argument, I've asked my leadership to provide us with a cost comparison between us and SWA. I want to know what the cost difference is for AA doing their overhaul versus SWA only doing 65% of theirs (obviously it would need to be adjusted for the different fleet types). So if it means that in dollars per an hour that SWA has a $2 an hour advantage over AA, then fine I can live with $2 an hour less, but not $12. Looking at the rest of the contract, outside of the always hanging over our head defined pension plan, they have better rules.
Exactly, if the numbers were in the companys favor they would have given them to us, but we have'nt recieved them. Sometimes we will hear certain pro-company types quote what MROs pay their mechanics but finding out what AA would pay that MRO for the labor is a different story, the fact is its probably very variable. We charge something like $95/hr and we turn away work all the time on the line.
I asked Arpey at the shareholders meeting last year about in house maintenance and the cost, he said " The jury is still out on that".
Pension? 8% match on all their earnings? If I had the choice to do it all over again I'd take the SWA Pay with the match, figure you could be putting around $28000(including the $8000 company match) a year away and still have more spending money, more Holidays and Holiday pay, more Sick Time, more IOD Time, more Vacation etc. The last value statement(for some reason they no longer update it) indicated around $1100 went into my Pension from the company in 2008. They are saving a ton of money with that DB plan compared to SWA.
I agree, if OH puts us at a disadvantage, which I dont think it does when everything is factored in, then I could say, OK we cant match SWA, but no way should there be a $10/hr difference.
If SWA can pay industry leading and make a profit while selling seats for $69 then AA should have no problem doing the same when they sell seats for as much as 10 times that figure.
When AA says they want to be Competitive they dont mean that they want a level playing field, they want every advantage that can be had.
We now have 6 active threads about the TWU TA and/or the AMP card drive. Some of you are posting the same reply on every thread. Please do not start anymore threads on either subject. Trust that the thought you just had or the newspaper/Internet article you just found about either subject is probably not unique enough to require a separate thread. Just add it to one of the threads as a new comment.
