Ok we get it, AA employs more mechanics than any other carrier, but at much lower rates of pay. Guess your goal is to make this list:
http://en.wikipedia....rgest_employers note that none of those employers are Union, and they all pay crap and sell the same line that you do that working for less is good for you and you should be happy and willing to do so so they can hire more people. Sorry we don't need to pay $700 a year for that, we can get that with no union, speaking of which Delta, Fed Ex and Jet Blue (combined) have more A&P mechanics working for them than AA does, and they pay them better than AA does. fact is that AA did get everything they wanted, they got it in 2003 without filing for BK and came back for more than they ever thought possible in 2012, and Don Videtich delivered both times and many times in between ,,,JLT, PLI, etc etc. No FAR Shops don't need to Hire A&Ps, but they prefer them. Lets face it, A&Ps were willing to sell themselves cheap to MROs in the hopes that they could get the experience they needed to get into the airlines, or to hold them over till they were recalled to an airline. People who are mechanically inclined are even more likely to skip out or not even take those jobs because they don't look at it as a means to something better, they see it for the shitty job it is and move on to other industries. All those FBOs are hiring and they all complain they cant get people. If the FBOs (and Military) were the places where guys got the experience they needed and they cant get people that means problems for the airlines down the road. We didn't save jobs, in fact AA has hired over 100 mechanics off the street since they filed for C-11, over 500 since we gave concessions in 2003. what we have done is turn our job into one of the jobs people take to get the experience they need to get a good job somewhere else. We have already become the source of experienced mechanics not only for SWA but even Non-union outfits like Jet-Blue and Fed -Ex. You say its either-or. The fact is we don't even make UA or Delta wages let alone SWA wages. You say that SWA traded away wages in exchange for outsourcing but cant provide one iota of proof, the fact is that SWA did not increase outsourcing, they maintained it, the only change is that they now allow the company to outsource it overseas, on a limited basis, whereas we allow the same thing without the same limits.