All quiet on the marathon negotiations front....

[FWAAA]

So are you saying that we can only ask for a raise if AA is showing a profit?

That's not how I interpreted frontline's comments. Employees can certainly ask for raises even when their employer is losing money. The odds of getting large raises, however, are much smaller when the employer has lost many billions of dollars over the past 10 years. If AA were making billions of dollars of profit, AA's refusal to offer large raises would be unconscionable. AA's refusal to offer large raises in the face of a decade of losses is entirely reasonable.

You've posted numerous times that you can't afford to replace your old car given your current finances. It's curious that you won't concede that your employer is in the same predicament - it can't afford to commit to long-term substantial increases in its on-going expenses (your wages) any more than you can afford to commit to long-term car payments for a new car. "But, but, but the company is spending billions for new planes" you reply. Well, it's either get fuel efficient planes or keep spending extra billions on fuel. I'd rather AA buy the planes (a one-time expense totalling billions of dollars) than commit to spending extra billions on fuel for every year into the future.

Look at the revenue. There are less of us yet their revenues are higher than ever. They pledged Billions to JAL and annopunced expansions and upgrades all over the place. They can spend it faster than we can give it up. You could pay them to work here and they could still claim losses. Nobody else out there cuts the price they charge because AA is showing a loss, why should we? You are thinking more like a shareholder than an employee. We have no real say in who runs this company or how they run it, why should we be held responsible for the results?

Yes, revenue is up. So are fuel expenses and many other expenses. "Billions to JAL?" False. AA pledged a fraction of a billion to JAL, and arranged for TPG to invest up to a billion in JAL. As JAL refused all outside investment and instead filed for bankruptcy, AA (and TPG) has invested nothing in JAL.

The fact is that next year they could post billions in profits but you will still be locked into this concessionary agreement for three more years.

There's some unbridled optimism there.

If you're concerned that AA might post billions in profit, then negotiate a real profit-sharing program by which the employees will share a substantial portion of the profits.

 

[eolesen]

If you're concerned that AA might post billions in profit, then negotiate a real profit-sharing program by which the employees will share a substantial portion of the profits.

If I'm reading correctly, the TA's all have First Dollar profit sharing, so there's already a 15% profit sharing pool set up... Maybe not substantial for a lot of people, but it's a lot better than the $500M threshold...

 

[FWAAA]

If I'm reading correctly, the TA's all have First Dollar profit sharing, so there's already a 15% profit sharing pool set up... Maybe not substantial for a lot of people, but it's a lot better than the $500M threshold...

It's a good start, but 15% is a little cheap considering the sacrifices of the past decade. I don't know the details of the 1990s profit sharing program, but it resulted in profit sharing payouts of $200 million to $350 million or so each year for several years - which must have been at least a 20% share.

 

[frontline]

FWAAA you interpreted my comments correctly - thanks for expanding on the point.

The dog I have in this hunt is that I am an AMT. So this stuff most directly affects me. And yes, like the rest of you I want everything back from 2003. I also want my job to be around until I retire, and my pension and healthcare to be there for me after I retire. What I'm trying to find is balance between those two things. Most of you attack me for it, and that's fine. But I'm not going to sit back and watch a bunch of idiots commit career suicide because of demands that I don't think American can meet. Of course we deserve it all back and more. And if I really thought AA was capable of giving it to us and still competing effectively against rivals I would push with you. But that's just not the case, so we are going to have to settle on some sort of middle ground here. That might not be the TA's exactly as written, but it will probably be something close to it.

 

[comatose]

FWAAA you interpreted my comments correctly - thanks for expanding on the point.

The dog I have in this hunt is that I am an AMT. So this stuff most directly affects me. And yes, like the rest of you I want everything back from 2003. I also want my job to be around until I retire, and my pension and healthcare to be there for me after I retire. What I'm trying to find is balance between those two things. Most of you attack me for it, and that's fine. But I'm not going to sit back and watch a bunch of idiots commit career suicide because of demands that I don't think American can meet. Of course we deserve it all back and more. And if I really thought AA was capable of giving it to us and still competing effectively against rivals I would push with you. But that's just not the case, so we are going to have to settle on some sort of middle ground here. That might not be the TA's exactly as written, but it will probably be something close to it.
[/quot
Vote for this and you won't have what you want.(Deleted by moderator). "Exactly as written"-what writing would that be? Full language....right...were talking the TWU. Good luck paying for your retiree medical. Hopfully your junior to me and enjoy the paycut when you get bumped to OSM.

 

[Thomas Paine]

Question; I was talking about the concessions when this came up.
If this POS actually passes and we are refunded what we put into the prefunding what happens to the other half? When we went into prefunding it was a concession, the deal was we had to pay half, the company paid the other half but it was guAAranteed. For every dollar we put in AA matched that dollar. If they keep it that would be like having a 401k match for 20 years then the company turns around and says, "We dont want to have anything to do with managing a 401K plan so we are going to return your money but we are keeping what we matched for the last 20 years."

So what happens to the other half? Its a lot of money, figure just the M&R would be around half the total of 11500 M&R , around $29,000,000. Figure the first 3% raise is only costing $19,000,000 and the second one costs $9.5 million. It looks like the TWU International is set to give them a zero cost for 4 year contract!!