Farming Out The Line

[Bandit6794]

Line maint is farmed out Buck...Look at all the stations that were closed. Whats funny is when I talk to mechs from Tulsa on FT here in DFW they have not a clue what has happened to line stations. You all live in a TWU dream world sipping the cool aid......Sign a AMP Card and toss these bums out ffs

 

[Buck]

Line maint is farmed out Buck...Look at all the stations that were closed. Whats funny is when I talk to mechs from Tulsa on FT here in DFW they have not a clue what has happened to line stations. You all live in a TWU dream world sipping the cool aid......Sign a AMP Card and toss these bums out ffs

I do not know where you get your information, but it very well could be that as percentage there are more A&P mechanics at TULE who have signed AMP cards than the line.

If Line Maintenance is truly farmed out, then which union represents you?

Maybe you should try AMFA, the just received a T/A and settled before the amendable date of the contract. 7% at signing

 

[Bob Owens]

The general conversation here is continually bash the Overhaul Base(s) as a way to gain the advantage for the line maintenance?
Maybe this should be looked at from a different point of view? Let's farm out the line.

Buck;
Sometimes there's a failure to articulate. Most guys on the line dont want to throw OH under the bus, they are just sick of being thrown or dragged under the bus. Sometimes things are said out of fustration instead of logic. While line guys certainly are not blameless, because as long as I've been here Tulsa and AFW have always provided enough NO votes against concessions where if all the Line guys had also voted NO they could have out voted the Yes votes from Tulsa, (IIRC in 1995 if all the guys just in NY who didnt bother to vote had voted NO the contract would have failed) the fact is that in the past Tulsa has provided a disproportionate number of votes needed to push through bad deals, deals that hit guys on the Line especially hard due to the high cost of living, the weighted vote has allowed the elected officials from Tulsa to set the agenda and representatives from Tulsa have been less than sympathetic to the struggles the guys in the high cost cities face, in particular a lot of the jerks sent on field trips who say they dont want to price themselves out of a job(while they work hundreds of hours OT) yet they will not allow line guys to get more than base guys and that if they didnt like it they should move to Tulsa. You know how it goes, one jerk can undo all the Goodwill of a dozen sensible people (there have been some guys who agreed that there should be some consideration for the cost of living). So without a doubt there is a great deal of fustration on the line with what has happened in the past. Which is why a lot of line guys voted in favor of the TA, they figured, I hope wrongly, that even though there were concessions and the increases were inadequate to give those of us in high cost cities any substantial relief that if we turned it down the company would simply take money away from us and give it to OH and then they would provide enough Yes votes to get it ratified. Hopefully thats not the case but we may find out come November.

On the issue of farming out the line, AA already does. They do A checks overseas, (although not considered to be farmed out its not done by TWU) and have scores of domestic stations where we are staffed with Title III, II but no Title I. Been that way since before I got here. BDL used to be part of our Local, that Station has been outsourced for Title I but Title II and III remain but the company is going after them now as well. They want to increase the departure threshold for the TWU staffing formula, there is no specific Title I staffing formula. AA was an industry leader for many years in outsourcing line maintenance, now they are pretty much like any other carrier. In fact our Line Maint mechanic ratio is lower than some other carriers, recently I saw where Virgin, which only does Line Maintenance has around double the mechanics per airplane than AA has on the line. Nearly all carriers do a large percentage of their line maintenance, I dont know of any that outsource most of their Line mainteance yet keep most of their OH. I doubt its an option that AA is really looking at.

I know that many feel that if AA did not have OH that it would be willing to match WN wages, thats debatable, I dont think AA would be so generous, we would still have to fight for it, but if they did outsource the line do you think that it would drive wages up in Tulsa or down?

The fact is that over the last three years that I've been there AA has not proposed getting rid of OH, nor have they claimed directly that it costs them more to do it in house than if they sent it out. They only let out vague statements like "AA pays more for labor than competitors" which is inevitable when you dont outsource as much. If I pay my kid (Labor)$10 to cut my lawn with the equipment I already own and have for some time and pay a Landscaper $40/week to provide the service I could claim that I pay $10/week more for labor than if I outsourced it but the bottom line is I would be saving around $30/week doing it in house.

 

[strikeforce]

Wrong.....The international owns us, thats the propblem, are you new? Why are you arguing about line vs. OH when we can't even get shift differential or sick time back. Why don't you guys debate this after we get back what the twu international gave away, which will be NEVER, because AA owns the twu. Its the twu's job to create conflict among its members to prevent the organizing of another union, and that is exactly what is happening just look at the yays and nays from this weeks vote on being released. WE WILL NEVER BE UNIFIED WITH THE TWU INTERNATIONAL INVOLVED !!!!!

You're wrong Steve. WE are the union, and if the members don't participate in signing a card or take a vested interest in their own future....do actually believe that because we change the union name that members will instantly change their ways. I don't believe so. Like I said before.....AA is NOT going to just give us what we lost.....it's up to US to go out and get it....the TWU INTL can care less and they, just like AA, can live with the status quo, but WE are the ones that are suffering and it's up to US to shake things and ultimately bring AA to the table.

 

[Duke787]

This topic may give the few line guys who would love to throw O/H under the bus for a couple of bucks and hour an idea how we feel with their constant knock on O/H. We are ALL AMTs. I am pretty sure the coffee bean pickers in South America who moonlight as aircraft mechanics are not. The point is that the other airlines who are flying their jets out of the country are NOT getting their maintenance done by AMTs. American wants their's done by AMTs but want to pay coffee bean picker wages. This is not acceptable. Also just because other airlines have farmed out their O/H doesn't mean AA will. Remember...... AA was the first for two pay scales and the last to get rid of it. AA is also the first with SRPs. None of the other airlines have done this. One fact is that years ago a group of pilots at AA were looking into starting a line maintenance company to compete for AA's line maintenance and were discouraged by their union after the TWU complained. And Buck is correct. Many AMTs in Tulsa are convinced that the line guys will dominate AMP and drop O/H in the grease to get a raise. It serves no purpose at all to pit O/H against line except to help AA and TWU by discouraging AMP cards being signed. Do not think for one minute that AA would not farm out line maintenance. Keep talking about farming out O/H and your line job might just go away. Then AA would be the first to outsource line maint. Then good luck bumping into an O/H base where all the seniority is. We understand that line guys in high cost areas need more money. But you don't need to continue to run O/H down and blame us for not getting a big premium. As far as the 2003 concessions, Tulsa actually had more no votes than yes votes. The line had more yes than no. The fact of the matter is that both line and O/H need a raise. As long as guys doing maintenance at O/H bases have A&P certificates, they need to be paid as AMTs.

Didn't AMP start from TUL mechs?

 

[Duke787]

Buck;
Sometimes there's a failure to articulate. Most guys on the line dont want to throw OH under the bus, they are just sick of being thrown or dragged under the bus. Sometimes things are said out of fustration instead of logic. While line guys certainly are not blameless, because as long as I've been here Tulsa and AFW have always provided enough NO votes against concessions where if all the Line guys had also voted NO they could have out voted the Yes votes from Tulsa, (IIRC in 1995 if all the guys just in NY who didnt bother to vote had voted NO the contract would have failed) the fact is that in the past Tulsa has provided a disproportionate number of votes needed to push through bad deals, deals that hit guys on the Line especially hard due to the high cost of living, the weighted vote has allowed the elected officials from Tulsa to set the agenda and representatives from Tulsa have been less than sympathetic to the struggles the guys in the high cost cities face, in particular a lot of the jerks sent on field trips who say they dont want to price themselves out of a job(while they work hundreds of hours OT) yet they will not allow line guys to get more than base guys and that if they didnt like it they should move to Tulsa. You know how it goes, one jerk can undo all the Goodwill of a dozen sensible people (there have been some guys who agreed that there should be some consideration for the cost of living). So without a doubt there is a great deal of fustration on the line with what has happened in the past. Which is why a lot of line guys voted in favor of the TA, they figured, I hope wrongly, that even though there were concessions and the increases were inadequate to give those of us in high cost cities any substantial relief that if we turned it down the company would simply take money away from us and give it to OH and then they would provide enough Yes votes to get it ratified. Hopefully thats not the case but we may find out come November.

Well Said

 

[odie01]

Didn't AMP start from TUL mechs?

Yep, for the most part

http://www.ampnational.org/contact-list.html

 

[Overspeed]

The fact is that over the last three years that I've been there AA has not proposed getting rid of OH, nor have they claimed directly that it costs them more to do it in house than if they sent it out. They only let out vague statements like "AA pays more for labor than competitors" which is inevitable when you dont outsource as much. If I pay my kid (Labor)$10 to cut my lawn with the equipment I already own and have for some time and pay a Landscaper $40/week to provide the service I could claim that I pay $10/week more for labor than if I outsourced it but the bottom line is I would be saving around $30/week doing it in house.

If it were only that simple.

You have to feed your kid when he is not mowing your lawn right? House and clothe him too. You had to buy the lawn mower as well and gas? Store the equipment. So you are paying all that overhead to mow one lawn. The other guy mows five lawns a day with one lawn mower. I'd get my kid to mow some other lawns and utilize my asset to generate more revenue to offset his costs or tell him to get a job and outsource the lawn care.

Bob, when you can figure out a contract that gets all of us paid more and provides a cost neutral or positive effect to AA you will have a contract for us.

FYI - headcount per acft isn't everything and does not take in to consideration the work being done. Southwest has more AMTs on their 737 B check than us. Why? Because they do what we call C check work on the line phased in. Is that what Virgin is doing? If you are talking about Virgin America they don't have their own mechanics. Lufthansa Technik provides the management and other third party companies provide the labor. That's called outsourcing line maintenance which is what Buck is talking about. When those mechanics working on Virgin are done, they work on someone else's airplane. Kind of like the landscape guy.

Anything can be outsourced. The point is to separate TWU labor by the quality and productivity we provide. Right now AA has more out of service aircraft each day (acft sitting not generating revenue), more maintenance delays, and more maintenance cancels. Get those numbers to the top and that is the value insourced labor provides. Run at the bottom, and you are a liability.

 

[odie01]

Right now AA has more out of service aircraft each day (acft sitting not generating revenue), more maintenance delays, and more maintenance cancels. Get those numbers to the top and that is the value insourced labor provides. Run at the bottom, and you are a liability.

Not our fault, go F yourself

 

[Rogallo]

Not our fault, go F yourself

Well said.

 

[eolesen]

Not our fault, go F yourself

So whose fault is it? Are you understaffed on the line? Being denied parts? Tooling?

Why can't the line guys keep the wheels on the bus?

 

[Bob Owens]

If it were only that simple.

Anything can be outsourced. The point is to separate TWU labor by the quality and productivity we provide. Right now AA has more out of service aircraft each day (acft sitting not generating revenue), more maintenance delays, and more maintenance cancels. Get those numbers to the top and that is the value insourced labor provides. Run at the bottom, and you are a liability.

Maybe thats because after the line reached the companys goals as fas as savings they told us that we would see nothing from those savings, that fuel ate them up and we could go pound salt. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we are near the bottom in pay as well. At the bottom in vacation. At the bottom in Holidays. At the bottom in sick time. At the bottom in IOD time. At the bottom in training pay, etc etc. Having already gone the route of PLI, JLT etc and still being offered concessions why should the line strive to make AA number one when they strive to put us at the bottom?

 

[Bob Owens]

So whose fault is it?

Managements. They have wiped out morale. They have basically told us we are worthless and they want to pay us even less in real terms now than they did in 2003.

Are you understaffed on the line? Being denied parts? Tooling?

Yes, yes and yes. The company sold off their parts for pennies on the dollar years ago. Now they are buying them back for dollars on the penny.

If the workforce was motivated then they woulld be overstaffed but thats not the case. Threats will no longer work and why work harder to get the plane out under a paycut if by working less hard and having the plane sit you can make OT and pay your bills? Sure you may say that eventually you will lose your job because the company will shut down or outsource us* but each individual looks at it the same way executives look at their individual pay, "I'm only one and in the whole scale of things one is irrelevant".

You just dont get it. If you want things to get better for the company things have to get better, not worse, for the workers. The lie that if we help the company that they will reward us has been exposed. Their revenues are up $6 billion a year but instead of sharing any of that with us they want more concessions so they can have the newest fleet in the industry operating out of newly remodeled terminals across the country.

* If they did outsource the line its likely that the company that provides that service is staffed with AA mechanics. So they would likely have the same guys working it who are even more pissed off.

 

[Overspeed]

Maybe thats because after the line reached the companys goals as fas as savings they told us that we would see nothing from those savings, that fuel ate them up and we could go pound salt. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we are near the bottom in pay as well. At the bottom in vacation. At the bottom in Holidays. At the bottom in sick time. At the bottom in IOD time. At the bottom in training pay, etc etc. Having already gone the route of PLI, JLT etc and still being offered concessions why should the line strive to make AA number one when they strive to put us at the bottom?

Your explanation would make sense if AA was the best in fewest delays, cancels, and out of service aircraft back in 2003. Unfortunately we were not. Want to know when AA was the best that period right after the B scale was brought in. Ouch! That hurts.

Your arguments are weak, in fact you make the case that if you don't try something different soon, we will be headed the way of the airlines you want us paid like. Southwest, UPS, and Continental. 50% plus outsourcing and top paid line mechanics.

Want to pay 10,000 plus all the top in everything? Better find a way to deliver a better product. Outsmart AA with some ironclad language that protects and increases our pay when we deliver a high quality product. You probably won't do that because you will use your standard cop out...the company lies.

 

[furp]

Overspeed, on 08 October 2011 - 09:51 PM, said:


Right now AA has more out of service aircraft each day (acft sitting not generating revenue), more maintenance delays, and more maintenance cancels. Get those numbers to the top and that is the value insourced labor provides. Run at the bottom, and you are a liability.


And we are outsourcing 4 757 HEAVY "C" checks because Tulsa is SO EFFECIENT AND PRODUCTIVE???????????????????