magsau said:
NWA/AMT,
I appreciate your post. It is true that I have taken to posting news in regards to the issues at NWA based on Red Tail and NBNW. Those two clowns have been the oracles of misinformation about UAL for quite some time and my patience is spent with UA being portrayed as the anti-christ. When UA was setting the bar for wages in 2000 those guys were accusing us of being greedy. When we take concessions they accuse of being weak. It is just getting old and for them to live and glass house they better be willing to accept a few stones.
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I understand that, but it is important to note that they are only two of many. Even with all the cuts, two people don't even represent a significant percentage of one percent of the total NWA workforce. They are certainly entitled to their opinions, but do not assume they speak for the rest of us. I've really never understood the urge to rub peoples noses in their misfortunes myself, but the internet certainly seems to be the place for that.
You say that NW will be a better carrier if it goes to BK and will trump any UA plan.
No, I said that NWA will seek a competitive advantage through bankruptcy, one that will continue the current downward spiral for all of us as the other carriers seek to use the same methods again themselves to shift the balance back. I see no potential outcome available that would result in NWA becoming anything like what I would call a 'better carrier'.
Listen Bk is no cake walk. Why do you think everyone is so against it?
I'm quite aware of the effects of bankruptcy, both on companies and on their employees. My wife and I were almost forced into bankruptcy ourselves when Braniff went into bankruptcy in the early 1980s and she lost her job. I have lived through it with my brother at TWA, who survived not one, not two, but three trips through the process only to find himself barely hanging on at AA after almost 35 years. I've lived through it with my many friends and family members at other carriers who are going through it now and have lost careers, homes and marriages.
My brother had to endure years of comments from employees of other airlines as TWA was in and out of bankruptcy, demonizing the TWA employees for not fighting harder or just letting the airline die. Sound familiar?
I'm not implying in any way that bankruptcy is a desirable outcome for the employees or the stockholders, but I do stand behind my assertion that it is inevitable. The NWA executives cashing out their accounts at a loss is a good indication of that.
In this day and age when companies are willing to sacrifice anything on the altar of 'competition', even to the point of making their companies unviable in the long term, the stigma normally associated with going bankrupt will be secondary to the possibility of undoing half a century of collective bargaining gains by their employees in one stroke, renegotiating their leases and other committments and shedding debt and pensions.
The problem I see with NW in BK under a strike scenario is that NW plans to scab the airline. Beating the union and introducing scabs to the workplace will only drive moral to a lower level due to the personell issues.
Employee morale has never been a concern at NWA, and if they are able to break one group, they will expect the others to fall in line quickly. Knowing NWA's aircraft and maintenance program as well as I do, I certainly wouldn't want to fly on one maintained in that environment, but I don't think the flying public knows or cares.
Also the BK laws change in Sept or Oct. I think there might be some motivation to either get in or avoid it by NW and DL in the next couple of months.
Actually, those changes are primarily to Chapter 13 in an attempt to protect the credit card companies in personal bankruptcies, and will have less effect on the corporate bankruptcy process under Chapter 11. Even if they were primarily Ch 11 changes, the advantage to NWA and DL would be to go into bankruptcy sooner rather than later as it would allow them to reorganize under the old rules, rather than the new ones.
With tonights request for release by AMFA the showdown is looming and you guys are being thrust to the front of the line. Do you think the other unions will support the picket lines?
We're used to being in the front lines. We were the only union at NWA to refuse to use their 'contract template' of 12% raises last time, forcing things to the PEB in May 2001 and obtaining 24% raises and significant language improvements instead. We have held the line since 9/11 even as NWA punished us for our intransigence every day, day in and day out. We have a management team that last time told us in negotiations that "There comes a time when you (the mechanics) need to know your place", and this time has not even maintained the pretense that they are actually negotiating. We're not being thrust anywhere we aren't used to being anyway.
The majority of the unions at NWA have contracts that do not allow them to refuse to cross picket lines or engage in "sympathy stirkes". If we stand, we stand alone and we know it. I don't want to walk away from my job, but I'm willing to do so if it will help stop this downward spiral. It's either that or prepare for the potential day when the company demands the right to harvest the internal organs of their contract employees any time one of the executives needs a transplant and claims they have to have that right to stay competitive.
Good luck to all of us, we're all certainly overdue for some.
