Checking it Out said:
I voted yes on the package, Did not like it any more than anyone else.
Reality was, the company was going into bankruptcy. No secret here. If you take away the me too attitude and look at the whole picture you will see more members benifited in the long term and unlike United, have kept the scope clause intact. In fact they have continued to maintain a stable work force with the oppurtunity for our Brothers and Sisters to come back to work.
Will they come back to lower wages and less benifits? Interpretation is in the eyes of the beholder and what side of the fence you're on. If you are working for a major making more, than the pay stinks. But if you work at an FBO than the pay looks good. We are in the middle on pay with full overhaul capabilities. This is something we all should be proud of! We are not looking from the outside wishing we would have voted differently.
On top of this! we have good strong members fighting and working hard to retain the work in-house. If it was not for the continued involvement of the membership than AA would walk all over us like NW, United and several other Airlines who are telling their Union to get lost. What's worse the Members are allowing it to happen. Our Union is taking the heat from the minority in order to help the majority in the long term. Something the me too members forget.
Unions are about helping everyone, not the select few who are left. It was easy to allow AA to layoff masses of employees and farmout the work. Like NW and United. Anyone who believes we should have done different is a fool and is listening to some idiots.
Just remember if we the members would have listened to the amfa wantabes than the majority would be looking from the outside wishing they would have voted differently!!! This is reality, plan and simple.
What do you consider "long term"? 6 months? You said "more members benifited in the long term". Well I guess since you consider 15 minutes to be the max attention span of the members according to you "long term" is six months.
The fact is "Long term" is not six months. Even in financial reporting terms its a year. However for working people like us it would have to be looked at over a broader range of time. When we say 'long term" the only sensible way to look at it would be at least over the life of the contract. When we say long term we have to consider the term in relation to our professional lifetime. So long term could vary between the two year contract or the TWU favorite 6 year concessionary contract.
Over the long term this is the most damaging contract ever.
By the end of the contract we will likely be around $14/hr in real earnings lower than we were in 2001. That is if inflation remains below 3%. In other words just to bring our rate back up to where we were, we would have to demand at least an immediate 45% increase. You might argue how could that be? Well lets break this down to simple numbers. If you are making $10/hr and you take a 50% paycut to $5/hr how much of a raise will you have to get from $5/hr just to get back to $10? The answer is 100%. Because when you go by percentages obviously it will take a smaller percentage of a larger number to get to a smaller number than it would take to get from a smaller number to a larger number. However the perception of the number in relation to the percentage value is by the number, 100% vs 50%. At first glance it would seem like we were asking for double of what we gave when in fact its equal. Thats why unions usually demand a "snap back" this way it gets put out right in front that this is not a raise at all but a snap back to where we were. The problem is, even with a snap back we still lose, both in lost earnings during the period of the concession and because the snap backs number has been reduced in real terms by inflation.
The fact is that the TWU, without even being in bankruptcy gave up more than any other union, even other AA unions.
Over the long term, the period of this contract every mechanic will earn at least $120,000 less than if we had remained at the old scale. So in other words every one of us will in effect suffer, over the long haul, as if we were each laid off , without the ability to work somewhere else, for two years. In effect, over the long term we are working for health benifits and for credited years towards retirement. We are working pretty much for free for two years. Every one of us is giving AA two years of free labor thanks to the TWU.
When you consider that we are unlikely to completely recover, especially if the TWU is still in place, and restore our wages, then the losses contue in the extended long term. How likely are we to get a $45% increase in 2008? The fact is the TWU has never negotiated such an increase.
The TWU may have kept people working, but the long term damage that they have done to the profession is without precident. They kept people working but they are not making what they should have reasonbly expected to earn. And the TWU made sure this damage to our careers was permanent by agreeing to a long term contract.
Why is it that whenever the TWU grants long term contracts its always in response to a short term crisis?
Then they turn around and blame "the membership".
In answer to the question "Who is to blame?" the answer is both, however like a civil case a percentage of blame should be affixed to both parties of the dispute.
The members are all adults and as adults they have to take some measure of accountability for whatever choices they make.
The union bears a fiduciary responsibility to represent the best interests of the membership as a whole and to give them all the available information neccissary to make an informed decision. The union failed to do this. Instead they made the best choice for the union. They took the route that would have the minimal amount of impact on the Treasury of the union and only informed the members of the possible, yes possible, impact of a post bankruptcy application by the company to void our contracts. All of these things happened outside of bankruptcy. They failed to inform the members of the long term affects this agreement would have on their lifestyles. They failed to take into account that in this industry typical recoveries take less than two years and put in a contract that lasted 6 years. They did this despite having recently come off an even less harsh concessionary contract that went from 1995 to 2001. A period where AA made record profits year after year. They relied totally unpon the information of ECLAT a company that may have had prior relations with AA. This company failed to disclose Executive perks that went unscathed throught the purported "restructuring" and other accounting gimmicks that would understate AAs true financial condition. Things such as the $988 million loss to goodwill, the prepaying of leases, accellerated depreciation etc.
In addition to failing to disclose those things to the members the Union also failed to plan a strategy to fight against the possible filing, in a possible bankruptcy filing, to abrogate our agreement. They failed to inform the members that we have a twenty year history of giving AA the most advantageous concessions of any union in the industry. That other carriers were only presently getting in bankruptcy, concessions that the TWU gave the company in 1983. That it is patently unfair for management to place the blame for financial difficulties upon the union that granted continuos concessions for over twenty years. That it is unreasonable for the workers of AA to have to be forced by the court to grant AA a competative edge though the sacrifices of workers instead of superior busness practices.
In fact the union offered the members no real options. They failed to provide any leadership whatsoever other than telling us what the company would try to doin bankruptcy. They offered no plan as to how they would oppose such moves by the company.
The union, by taking the members money has a duty to preserve the conditions in the contract that brought the members to the company and the union in the 2001 contract until its renewal date in 2004. The members did not go to the union to modify the contract prior to its term. The company requested that the union go to the members. In the contract prior to the 2001 contract members requested modifications to the contract but the company refused. So upon the request of the company, not the members, negotiations were commenced by the leadership of the union, probably several months in advance of the publicized negotiations. However the union leadership made no case in defense of the 2001 agreement. The union hired a questionable firm to audit the companys books for them. (The name of the firm ECLAT is defined as "scandal" in the dictionary) The union relied solely upon the reports of this single firm to make their recommendation to the membership. Statements by other "experts" can not be accepted as credible unless the information given to these "experts"(although we should not take it for granted that any of them are indeed qualified to be considered experts) by the union via ECLAT(ie SCANDAL) are first established as a credible full representation of the companies condition. Despite the revelation in the WSJ that obviosly the report from ECLAT was lacking the union still went forward with the agreement. The Union claimed that they did so because the bankruptcy filing was iminent, however the company had already deferred filing after the flight attendants rejected their agreement after claiming that the time for deciosion was not alterable. Clearly the time was alterable and AA even admitted to still having Billions of dollars on hand as a busy travel season was approaching. Clearly the company wanted its agreement prior to the release of its 10K that showed that miuch of the losses incurred were "accounting" losses and did not reflect an actual loss in cash. Such information, clarified and revealed to the membership would probably influenced their vote since the picture of the companys true financial condition would be revealed to be much better than what they had been led to believe. The fact is that the company did alter the drop dead date already, the information put forward to the members was incomplete and deceptive and the union still put the agreement in place despite the fact that the company was not forthright, makes us wonder what the unions true motive was.
There is no doubt that a bankruptcy filing would have placed a burden on the Treasury of the TWU. The same is true for the other unions on the AA property. Unlike the IAM, and ALPA (the AFA recently merged with the CWA because of financial difficulties, no doubt brought on from the USAIR and UAL bankruptcy filings) the unions on the property at AA are small with limited funds. There is little doubt, from the standpoint of the union and the treasury that a bankruptcy filing was the more expensive and riskier path to take. In other words they had less to lose by giving away our pay and benifits than by fighting for them.
(It should also be noted that the TWU minimzed their losses by attacking benifits such as holidays, vacation, sick time etc because these losses do not lower per capita. So even though our pay as a whole is decreased the dues income to the union are only partially decreased.)
Should the TWU have chosen to fight the company and not give concessions the company would have likely filed for bankruptcy. The union then would have had the legal burden of building a case to protect our agreement. If the union chose to make a strong case in defense of our agreement to the judge they would have had to reveal the fact that we have led the industry in concessions for over twenty years. This could lead to potentailly embarrasing revelations by the company such as the cozy relationship they have had in the past and how the TWU, not neccissarily the membership though, benifitted from it. The fact that the parent company AMR rarely contested a showing of interest by its employees to become TWU members is not the normal scenario between union and company. It usually only happens in the context of an exchange of value. In other words the union gives the company something in exchange for the new members. For the union, the ability to get more members can easily offset lower dues per member. From a business union standpoint this is a winning deal, despite the fact that from a union standpoint its unethical. However ethics and unionism rarely have much an influence on Sonny Hall.
Another perspective to highlight is the potential impact within the TWU should the company have filed bankruptcy. The Financial burden could have endangered the TWU leadership. This regime already ties up much of the members dues fighting their own members and locals. By having to divert funds to the ATD to fight the company it would limit Sonny Halls resouces in fighting his own Union. Clearly another battle, and an expensive one at that would not be in Sonny Halls interest, and who does Jim Little, the man who decided to sign the contract "without further ratification" after the WSJ revelations, work for? You guessed it Sonny Hall.
So I would say that in this case both partys do share the blame, however the blame would be 95% union, 5% members.
The remedy for the situation is clear. Since the members can not hold Jim Little accountable through internal means within the TWU, get rid of the entire TWU. That is the only option that the TWU allows us, either accept the way they do things or get rid of them. Vote AMFA, vote PAFCA and VOTE AGW. The fact is we were all betrayed by the one organization and there is only one remedy available. VOTE OUT THE TWU.
h34r:
