Great letter from one of our pilots who understands. Permission to publish granted. I am going fishing.
8/ 22/12 The morning after thoughts. It was obvious to me after attending the BPR meeting yesterday that we did not require the assistance of a legal team or professional negotiator to draft this very poor tentative agreement MOU. We are giving them immediate {upon aa/lcc deal} code sharing, COC surrender because AA on paper will most likely be the successor, and min fleet for banking reasons that sounds like BS, all replaced with convoluted time leveling and other tricky items along with term sheet APA bankruptcy pay rate for 3 years, then parity with Delta.{we got them down from 6 years, it should be immediate.} I must point out that I left the meeting after lunch and did not hear more BS as I had already spent two vacation days at meetings which I feel were more important to me and my colleagues than my plans of saltwater fishing. This is a NO vote if it gets to me, for now everyone needs to write and call reps and urge them we can do much better and no rush, we have what they want. It was a good example of typical Tempe, nothing has changed as my President assures me.,
We are still being hammered by an opportunist management who will not recognize our value and contributions that made this deal a possibility. Attorney Wilder our prof. negotiator said to me personally yesterday that Parker is not a good businessman, he is basically using slave labor and calling himself a success. He said he wished he he could do the same with his law firm, but if he did not pay his people well and kept more money for himself, he would be out of business do to the inferior help. The hammer and shotgun techniques have a time limit by natural design. I think we are collectively allowing our company to make fools of us, as this tentative agreement shows. Good luck to us all.
8/21/12 Shortly after the meeting thoughts. The reason for min fleet size protection give away...Kirby says banks we borrow from do not like min fleet size, Dean could not figure out why that would be. I suggested they hire some corporate bankers for an opinion on that. Sounds like BS, Paul D'iorio was incredible explaining the tricks in most of the the language. No wonder Kirby wanted him gone.. I suggest that if anyone wants to understand the truth on this to contact him. He knew the subject better than anyone who spoke. This is a crap deal, with $10,000 which they said would be closer to 9,000. Nice payback for $10 billion in contributions. Professional negotiator Wilder seemed coached to sell the deal...take these protections, you will need them , AA is bigger than you and not historically nice to merged pilots. He also was pushing the time issue. Hurry and sign this, time is right now for a deal.. I spoke to him and he was not aware of our history, of LOA 93 my $100 grand a year pay cut. He said look what happened to the EAL pilots. I said I do not see the comparison. This guy may have a good resume, but I do not trust him. I told him to his face that there is no shortage of attorneys that tell their clients to take this deal and hurry. I asked him what we are paying him per hour as you know my salary, He would not answer. I am praying the bpr stops playing politics and does not bring this to the pilots for a vote. Code share, COC and min fleet size are huge and they want us to give it all up. We can do better. Gary seems to be in a hurry, must have a schedule to meet for Tempe.
