The average wage/salary/benefit expense per employee for AA mainline employees (from the AA 10-Ks, not the AMR 10-Ks so as to exclude Eagle) has increased from $81,329 in 2002 to $93,504 in 2009 - that's an increase of over $12,000. I've posted various explanations (as has eolesen) but you've not been satisfied with them. FAs have a much longer progression to top-out and thus, thousands of them hired throughout the 1990s saw their pay increase each year following the concessions. Same with pilots hired in the late 1990s. Yes, the TWA FAs were topped out, but pilots and mechanics weren't just stapled, so the furloughs included nAAtives as well as TWA vets.
I actually agree with you - you'd think that with all the retirements over the past seven years that the average wage expense would not have increased quite as much as it has.
Average AA FA wages have increased from about $42k in 2002 to about $51k in 2009:
http://www.airlinefinancials.com/airline_data_comparisons.html (chart #64)
If average wage has increased by $9,000/year, then average wage/salary expense to AMR has easily increased by $11k or $12k. AA's cost for medical insurance has increased since 2002 despite the increases charged to the employees.
Chart #63 shows that the average wages for AA pilots has increased by about $10k over the same period. Add in the taxes and benefits and AA's pilots probably cost about $12k more per year on average. Dunno about fleet or agents, but perhaps their average wage expense has increased by similar numbers. As to mechanics, perhaps overtime has ballooned, which would increase the average cost per employee.
I realize that the insatiable desire for conspiracy theories about management pay are driving the bus here, but it's pretty obvious that the concessions, while deep and painful, are constantly overstated and exaggerated. Just days before September 11, 2001, the FAs ratified their new contract with large pay raises. A few weeks after September 11, the TWU ratified their large pay-raise contract. As to those two groups, the concessions merely placed the employees back where they were in summer of 2001 before their large raises.
The numbers simply dont add up. You are claiming that the costs went up $10 or $12k because people were going up steps, well that might be plausible if we hadnt taken a 25% paycut. The number of people going up steps would have to be astronomical to not only make up the 25% paycut across the board (even for those on steps)(ok 18% after you plug in the increases) but bring the average pay another $12000 higher than it was before the 25% paycut. Like I said its not as if nobody retires, so if the numbers are declining, coming from the top that would more than offset step raises. Lets do an example;
Year 1-2002
Employee A New hire $50,000 all in except 2 weeks of VC $2000 Total $52000
Employee B 15 years $80,000 all in except 4 weeks VC $5600 Total $ 85200
Employee c 30 years $80,000 all in except 7 weeks VC $9800 Total $89800
Average pay equals
$75,700
Cut the pay by 25%
Employee A = $39000
Employee B =$63900
Employee c= $67350
New Average pay =$56759
7 years later employee A is at top pay and Employee C retired and the workforce is 1/3 smaller.
2009
Employee A =$61340 plus 7%*=$65000 (difference due to VC)
Employee B =$63900 plus 7%*=$68100
So the new average pay should be
$66,550.
$66550- $75,700= -9150, as you said it went up $12,000, so there's over a $20,000 difference.
So as you can see even if 1/3 of the workforce was hired in 2002 (my guess is it was less than 5%) the average, due to the fact that mainly through attrition at the top end our workforce has shrunk by around 35%, there is no way that our average pay could have gone up that much. We would have to be earning around $20,000 a year more in OT each than we were in 2002 to bring it up $12,000 past our preconcession average, thats around 380 hours more per person.
So how did it go up $12k when it should be down at least $9k if 1/3 of the workforce was at entry level wages in 2002? Well perhaps some of that could be from the RISE program, where they took all the maintenance supervisors and made them Managers. Yea they cut the number but its crept back up to where we now have more managers per mechanic than we had supervisors per mechanic in 2002. Recently they just made another area director for the northeast even though headcount wise we are around the same as when we only had one area director for the whole East coast.
* we only had a wage increase of 7%, none of the other components of the 25% cut were restored. I figured that the new hire after seven years was back up to two weeks of VC and the 15 year guy now had 21 years so was back up to 4 weeks of VC.
