Cwa Report On Labor Meeting

tadjr

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cwa.net 2/13/04


Feedback from the 2/6/04 Labor Advisory Committee Meeting
[Note on Blacked-Out Text: This report contains CWA analysis and assessments and contains no confidential business information. In spite of that fact, management has chosen to censor certain parts of this feedback report (the blacked-out parts on this page), invoking the one-time-only confidentiality statement we signed to gain access to the meeting. It has been CWA’s policy not to sign these statements in the past because they interfere with our obligation to keep passenger service employees fully informed. The blacked-out portions indicate that was the right policy. See the discussion of this issue below.]
No new business plan was presented. The meeting consisted of these three distinct parts:


° Description and discussion of 4th Q and current financials,
° Description of the PHL marketing and pricing plan to combat WN,
° Description of executives’ desire to reduce pay-benefit-workrule levels to those of America West and JetBlue.

Description and discussion of current and 4th Q financials: Those who listened to the 2/6/04 public webcast of US Airways’ 4th Q financial results and analysts’ questions and comments on that webcast heard virtually everything that was covered in the first part of the Labor Advisory Meeting.
If there was a difference between the webcast and the LAC presentations, it was merely a matter of different spin on the same subject matter. This was, presumably, to drive home management’s point that things aren’t going well and employees need to cut pay and benefits.
Description of the PHL marketing and pricing to combat WN: Management outlined their plans for an energetic marketing, advertising and pricing strategy to overcome Southwest at PHL. There seemed to be a sense of relief among the union representatives that these aspects of the PHL strategy are being handled aggressively and competently.
Presentation of executives’ desire to reduce cost levels to those of America West and JetBlue: This was (blacked out section) agenda item. (7 lines of blacked out text). Our recent CWA poll shows 97% of passenger service employees feel further concessions by our group are not justified.
Management presented no outline of what the upside of a new concession agreement might be for employees. If you remember, last round of concessions management painted a promising picture of “Jets for Jobs,†and a “Soft Landing†for employees affected by restructuring. But there was no such carrot dangled at this meeting.


Why CWA objects to management’s proposed confidentiality statement...
The issue:
1. Management refuses to allow CWA to participate in the Labor Advisory Committee unless we sign a two-and-a-half-page confidentiality statement. The required statement is very broad and would prevent CWA from communicating anything to our members that the company claims is confidential. The statement also contains several statements of CWA’s legal liability if the agreement were violated.
2. We provided management with a counter-proposal: a very similar statement of confidentiality but one that covers only company financial data, marketing plans, business strategy, etc., and does not cover labor-relations issues and collective bargaining issues. We have no desire to reveal any company sensitive data - only a desire to keep our members fully informed of the demands and issues put forward by management as they impact the passenger service group.
Management responded to say take it or leave it; they will not entertain any changes or modifications to their required statement.
3. CWA, In order to gain access to what we were led to believe would be a very significant LAC meeting on 2/6/04, signed the required secrecy agreement on a one-time basis for the 2/6/04 meeting only. We made this exception because this particular meeting had been variously billed as the roll-out of the new business plan that might affect our members, or a discussion of the sale-of-assets plan, or a discussion of current and going-forward finances of the company. It turns out the meeting contained no significant information on any of those topics.
CWA Local Presidents and Staff