More Time for Judge Lane

[Bob Owens]

Of course I know that. Is the term sheet that much worse?

Why with the TWU produced OSM classification can the company even begin to ask for less than the legacy carrier average? Yet the TWU sees no value in its membership other than a dues commodity.

Yes the company can abrogate, but someone led the membership to where we are today.

Clue: it wasn't AMFA at United.

When you factor in theOSMs that makes our average wage that much lower than competitors. IIRC ours comes out to around $27/hr

 

[Bob Owens]

Not true again Bob, another lie. US, UA, DL, and WN have dramatically lower overhaul staff than they had before.

Where is the lie? You even admit that they all do OH later on in the same post.

US, UA, DL, and WN all have over 40% outsourced maintenance which is far more than AA is currently under the TWU scope language you call inferior.

And what you voted YES to was between 45% and 55% outsoucing, depending on what happens with Taesl.

UA now has no cap on outsourcing.

Then neither do we.

.

And read the UA/IBT deal, they have a utility job description in their contract. These utility people are unlicensed and can do work on aircraft and GSE. DL has over 1900 unlicensed repairmen working in DL Tech Ops. Look it up on the FAA repair station database.

Yep, all post 9-11(except maybe Delta but they are non-union), we had them in place since 1995.

Outsourcing at was in force before SRPs. The company asked for that position in 1995 in response to the low cost carriers that were moving in to our markets and outsourced all their overhaul. CO was already outsourcing work, they shut down DEN and then LAX in the early 90s. Keep spinning your tall tales. UA offered the early out only last year which is over six years after they exited BK. They offered no early out in BK. Get your facts in the right order.

I never said they offered the Buyout in BK, but then again when UAL went into BK they really were broke, the mechanics were at the top of the industry in pay, the govt had just turned their application for 9-11 funding down. Still they came out of it with more vacation, more holidays better OT rules , equity, convertable notes and a 401K contribution on all earnings including OT.

I worked for an LCC. did you? The big guys have a lot of advantages that size bring. The LCC threat was alwayys overstated as eveidenced by the fact that the failure rate for all those upsarts is even higher than the failure rate for the legacy carriers. SWA is the main exception but they carved out and created their own markets, markets that the big boys werent interested in.

Removal of ASM caps can be a double edged sword. Yes they can take flights away from mainline however, if they open up new markets and add passengers we can add more mainline flights. That means more jobs. More ETOPS for JFK and LAX by adding flights to underserved markets. Not a bad plan if it works.

The company is not at the max, if that was the case then why arent they adding more flights now? This line of thinking sounds somewhat like supply side economics, if you give the rich all the money more will trickle down to the masse, or if we do away with minimum wage there will be more jobs or if we work for less we can save jobs.
.

I partially agree with you here. The only way they can keep the work in-house if we can jointly solve the operational and organizational problems but you call that boot licking. CO is bringing work back in-house because they do "boot licking" and do the airframe work with fewer people faster than the MROs. The language is in the CO/IBT contract that the workers must prove they can do it cheaper in-house.

We already have that language, they dont have anything like our Boot livcker letter where we committ to making AA "best in class" in return for the worst pay and benefit package in the industry.

But you call that boot licking and Bob doesn't do that.

And capacity is not tight. At the MRO show the vendors are excited to put in their bids. They called the new AA and Air Canada work a "game changer" for the North American MRO industry.

It probably is, because with tight capacity they can charge more.

One question. If the April 26th LBO or as it was renamed within hours of it being rejected 'The latest offer" was saving jobs then why was System Protection taken out. Please explain how getting rid of system protection saves jobs?

 

[Buck]

where we commit to making AA "best in class"

As I was reminded today to be best in class, you have to want it and both union and company must be able to get there.

One question. If the April 26th LBO or as it was renamed within hours of it being rejected 'The latest offer" was saving jobs then why was System Protection taken out. Please explain how getting rid of system protection saves jobs?

Remember the LBO had nothing to do with the union negotiating for the membership, it was a supplemental proposal from the company to aid their departure from bankruptcy.

 

[Bob Owens]

to aid their departure from bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy that they enterred into with $4 billion in cash, a 500 airplane order on the books, yep they need aid alright!

 

[Frank Szabo]

The bankruptcy that they enterred into with $4 billion in cash, a 500 airplane order on the books, yep they need aid alright!

... pathological liars usually do need help ...

 

[topDawg]

USAIRWAYs still does OH, so does UAL, Delta and even SWA, None of the other unionized carriers had OSMs or some form of low paid mechanic prior to 9-11. What makes you think AA wants to get out of the OH business? The company has yet to produce proof that they have places to send all that work, Your yes vote would have provided them all the time they need to find and set things up.

We gave AA SRPs (OSMs) back in 1995 with a Early Out to provide the vacancies. After 9-11 competitors had no way to introduce these low paid mechanics because the economy slowed, there was excess capacity and the carriers were shrinking in response to lessened demand. So in order to compete with AA, which had agreed to massive cuts across the board in 2003, they had to outsource. AA still enjoys the benefit of low paid OSMs to this day. They do not need to lay off any workers. They admitted that they still dont know what they would pay to outsource 35% of the work we do. The didnt turn over RFPs because they didnt have them and capacity is tight. Your YES vote would have eliminated System Protection and the ASM cap, which would have allowed AA to grow the Eagle operation at the expense of AA and lay off even more than the 4500 the company threatened us with.

AA could easily get to the balance between in-house and outsoucing that they say they need without resorting to big layoffs, the fact that they knocked it down a few thousand to me os proof that they really werent ready to send much out anyway, with system protection gone they could simply cut more later if they wanted to-or threaten to if we dont perform up to their expectations. They could offer an early out like UAL-$75 k and probably reduce enough to make up for all the jobs they are outsoucing from AFW. Normal attrition would absorb around 500 more per year.

Delta doesn't do any airframe overalls at all. Believe the same is for UA. US, I think, is 737 only, and that fleet is getting smaller being replaced by Airbus that is done in SAL.

and about the lay offs, When Delta cut OHs its cost TechOps 2,000 jobs(and the Tampa hangar). All of this was after they cut DWH/ORD and LAX. No engine work was sent out. Not trying to jump into the fight but if Delta, United and Northwest could all find someone to do its work all in the same time frame, what makes you think AMR can't find a place for its work? Also I know for a fact the MRO in HKG(does 67 OH for Delta, 67/777 overhaul for CO) is growing. Just saying, I wouldn't hedge my future on this. History and such.


*just want to point out, I'm not taking sides....just putting out the facts from someone who has been there and done that*

 

[Mr Red]

Go to delta tech ops ,they do everything!

 

[xUT]

Go to delta tech ops ,they do everything!

Delta nor anyone else (except AA) does HMV's.
Also, Delta does not do "everything".

Delta TechOps
United TechOps
AA-MRO

Couldn't find anyone else...
B) xUT

 

[Overspeed]

When you factor in theOSMs that makes our average wage that much lower than competitors. IIRC ours comes out to around $27/hr

I'll accept that but then you need to include the wage that the other airlines indirectly pay to get the work done at MROs - foreign and domestic. That's how they offset the higher in-house labor cost. You could increase the in-house OSM percentage to increase the in-house wages for the other lucky few. Just like WN, UPS, and FedEx offset the higher wages they pay their in-house staff. There is no escaping it Bob, even your own logic makes the case that lower cost to perform overhaul is what offsets the in-house wages. AA would love the WN, UA, or US contracts, offer it to them and Brundage will jump at the chance. I would guarantee they would take the WN contract. All the Line AMTs would make $42 and the ~1500 working DWH would also get $42. The TULE and AFW guys...sorry. You didn't make the cut.

 

[Overspeed]

Where is the lie? You even admit that they all do OH later on in the same post.



And what you voted YES to was between 45% and 55% outsoucing, depending on what happens with Taesl.




Then neither do we.

.



Yep, all post 9-11(except maybe Delta but they are non-union), we had them in place since 1995.



I never said they offered the Buyout in BK, but then again when UAL went into BK they really were broke, the mechanics were at the top of the industry in pay, the govt had just turned their application for 9-11 funding down. Still they came out of it with more vacation, more holidays better OT rules , equity, convertable notes and a 401K contribution on all earnings including OT.

I worked for an LCC. did you? The big guys have a lot of advantages that size bring. The LCC threat was alwayys overstated as eveidenced by the fact that the failure rate for all those upsarts is even higher than the failure rate for the legacy carriers. SWA is the main exception but they carved out and created their own markets, markets that the big boys werent interested in.



The company is not at the max, if that was the case then why arent they adding more flights now? This line of thinking sounds somewhat like supply side economics, if you give the rich all the money more will trickle down to the masse, or if we do away with minimum wage there will be more jobs or if we work for less we can save jobs.
.



We already have that language, they dont have anything like our Boot livcker letter where we committ to making AA "best in class" in return for the worst pay and benefit package in the industry.




It probably is, because with tight capacity they can charge more.

One question. If the April 26th LBO or as it was renamed within hours of it being rejected 'The latest offer" was saving jobs then why was System Protection taken out. Please explain how getting rid of system protection saves jobs?

That they do overhaul. Yes but not the same amount we do and UA and DL have unlicensed mechanics. From the FAA website.

Personnel Certificated Mechanics: 4085 Repairmen: 103 Non-Certificated Mechanics: 1721 Total Employees: 8134

No it was not. The 35% was for total manhours and caps line at 15%. The current method is current practice which limits the outsourcing to 10% of total maintenance spend and that formula was to be phased out. The 3/22 term sheet is 40% no line cap. Nice spin though Bob way to misinform.

Yep, better pay but a lot less jobs. Now they have no cap on outsourcing. Sweet deal. Forgot to mention the shafting the retirees got with their medical. I guess they don't matter.

No LCC work for me. That kills the argument, you win. Size does bring advantages as long as you utilize those advantages. This company with its poor planning, no parts, and people who don't want to work or tired of caring the load for the slackers adds up to a poor performing operation. That's not a union problem though.

Its the ability to add larger RJs. Not fly the 55 seaters more. They can't add more large RJs under the current language and that restricts growth for the whole airline.

No, CO just went through paycuts, pay freezes, and massive layoffs while they became best in class. From their first BK in 1983 to finally making industry top pay by 2009. 26 years to get back to the top. That's a good comparison Bob. I like that one. They have the competitive process in the IBT deal with not as flowery language as us.

Bob, we are going to see what happens very soon. Obviously we will never agree but the ultimate truth is about to be revealed on June 22nd. Unless another deal comes out before then. We'll see.

 

[lineguy43]

I'll accept that but then you need to include the wage that the other airlines indirectly pay to get the work done at MROs - foreign and domestic. That's how they offset the higher in-house labor cost. You could increase the in-house OSM percentage to increase the in-house wages for the other lucky few. Just like WN, UPS, and FedEx offset the higher wages they pay their in-house staff. There is no escaping it Bob, even your own logic makes the case that lower cost to perform overhaul is what offsets the in-house wages. AA would love the WN, UA, or US contracts, offer it to them and Brundage will jump at the chance. I would guarantee they would take the WN contract. All the Line AMTs would make $42 and the ~1500 working DWH would also get $42. The TULE and AFW guys...sorry. You didn't make the cut.

O speed. You guys working inhouse MX already make more for the company than them farming it out to an MRO..We knew this at NW too. It was cheaper for us to do it than farming it out..Do you know how many times we got something back from an MRO and it was all jacked up and we spent days maybe weeks working out the bugs and it happens at my current employer too. But it is never figured into the bottom line. Somehow airlines figure it is cheaper to farm out heavy mx but in reality it is cheaper to do it in house if you figure how much time is taken to work out the bugs after a 'C' check from an MRO. Not that some don't do good work but a lot don't.

 

[Bob Owens]

OS doesnt want to hear it if it doesnt come from the company or the internationjal. He cites LCCs (which used to pay much less than us) and then claims that outsourcing saves money. What he leaves out is one of the advantages of size is volume of work, which makes doing the work in house more cost effective. Large carriers should have lower total costs, Thats one of the driving forces behind all these mergers, efficiencies gained through size, synergies. Will their labor costs be higher, yes of course because ther are more workers but total unit costs should be lower. In other words they should be able to produce a seat cheaper, especially when the wages become inverted and the smaller carriers pay more. He makes it sound like the smaller carriers simply pass cost savings from outsourcing on to their workers, hardly, smaller carriers pay more because their workers tend to be younger and therefore more likely to leave for better wages if they dont. The fact is we dont know if there are or will be any cost savings when all is said and done as far as outsourcing, AA would be bidding into a market at a time where capacity is tight due to the growing shortage of mechanics, so the odds of them paying more are pretty good.


When AA was able to lower their in house costs through things like SRPs(OSMs) it gave them a cost advantage over other carriers that enjoyed the benefit of volume. Competitors did not outsource to compete with the LCCs they outsource as a means to try and get their costs closer to ours.

I worked for LCCs, OS admits he hasnt, so I heard the other side of the arguement. I heard how they could not pay what the majors pay because the majors have the advantage of size and the synergies that produces. We heard how they dont have the volume of work to run in house OH effeciently and that because of that they had to outsource their OH and essentailly share whatever profits there were with the vendor.

Southwest is an odd case, they have the volume of work yet still outsouce. But SWA has several things going for it that others, such as AA doesnt have.
1) SWA uses the most popular airliner ever built, therefore there are more places that work that fleet type. That gives it plenty of choices as far as vendors.
2) SWA has a large fleet of that common type thus they can get volume discounts when they bid the work out.
3) SWA has a large fleet so they use many vendors and can put vendors in competition with each other
4) SWA maintains enough in house to use as leverage against vendors in order to get the best price.
5) SWA has a long history with these vendors so they get the best price
The advantage of a single fleet type drives all of those points.

AA has none of those things, so they would probably pay considerably more than SWA does. When you look at the aircraft the company is keeping, in both the Mar 22 and Apr26 proposals its clear that AA has aircraft that nobody really wants to do, MD-80s and 757s. Nobody is going to ramp up for them either because those are fleets that are going away, and if they do they bwill jack up their price. Also what OS leaves out is there is no language that states that the Airbus and 787 work is ours, so when the MD-80s and 757s go away the pie from which that 45% outsoucing cap applies to shrinks, and the jobs go away if the pie shrinks. Right now they still have the volume of work to do those aircraft efficiently, as they are phased out the jobs will go with them, whether or not attrition keeps pace we dont know, but the number of heads in OH will shrink and the YES vote would not have prevented that, in fact it would allow the company to layoff workers with system protection as well.

 

[Bob Owens]

No it was not. The 35% was for total manhours and caps line at 15%. The current method is current practice which limits the outsourcing to 10% of total maintenance spend and that formula was to be phased out. The 3/22 term sheet is 40% no line cap. Nice spin though Bob way to misinform.

Wrong, read the language carefully. its 35% above what they do now which is either 10%, or 20% counting Taesl. That work is not part of the equation. How long have you been working for this company? I was there and I heard the companys intent. The 10% thats already outsourced is not counted as our work or part of the manhours and if Taesl is shut down that work would be outsourced and not counted either. So that puts the total for outsourcing at between 45% and 55% if Taesl shuts down. Thats not spin, thats AA sneaking through language where we are lead to believe it says one thing and after the fact they say it means something else, such as "system attrition", "Me Too", "one time layoff" etc etc.

No LCC work for me. That kills the argument, you win. Size does bring advantages as long as you utilize those advantages. This company with its poor planning, no parts, and people who don't want to work or tired of caring the load for the slackers adds up to a poor performing operation. That's not a union problem though.

No you just want to make it our problem by saying we should accept less because of it and spare the shareholders from their responsibilities.

Its the ability to add larger RJs. Not fly the 55 seaters more. They can't add more large RJs under the current language and that restricts growth for the whole airline.

Whose language, ours or the pilots?

Bob, we are going to see what happens very soon. Obviously we will never agree but the ultimate truth is about to be revealed on June 22nd. Unless another deal comes out before then. We'll see.

For us the Truth started coming out Friday, it will continue this week. What happens on the 22nd of June will likely have nothing to do with the truth. IMO there will be another deal before then.

 

[comatose]

Wrong, read the language carefully. its 35% above what they do now which is either 10%, or 20% counting Taesl. That work is not part of the equation. How long have you been working for this company? I was there and I heard the companys intent. The 10% thats already outsourced is not counted as our work or part of the manhours and if Taesl is shut down that work would be outsourced and not counted either. So that puts the total for outsourcing at between 45% and 55% if Taesl shuts down. Thats not spin, thats AA sneaking through language where we are lead to believe it says one thing and after the fact they say it means something else, such as "system attrition", "Me Too", "one time layoff" etc etc.





No you just want to make it our problem by saying we should accept less because of it and spare the shareholders from their responsibilities.




Whose language, ours or the pilots?





For us the Truth started coming out Friday, it will continue this week. What happens on the 22nd of June will likely have nothing to do with the truth. IMO there will be another deal before then.

NO Bob, it's called a sellout of the membership not a deal. Is it still called negotiations? Letting the company line out anything it wants

in you contract and putting it up for a vote. Shouldn't this new deal be put up for a vote from our local presidents before selling out its

members?

 

[Hopeful]

For us the Truth started coming out Friday, it will continue this week. What happens on the 22nd of June will likely have nothing to do with the truth. IMO there will be another deal before then.

I agree...And I am sure they know where to tweak it to get that YES vote...Remember, they do not have to tweak as much to reverse the 55-45 NO vote.....
Just enough to get a 51% yes vote.