Tell me Bob, when America West got rid of it's heavy maintenance back in the 90's did the pay of the AW line AMT go up to SWA levels?
Hey I'm telling you what the TWU and AA tell us,I dont agree with the logic but the fact is that OH has passed every contract, if you take out OH the concessions of 2003 and most of the other hugely concessionary contracts of the last twenty years would have failed.AA/TWU would not have been the industry leaders in A&P concessions for the last twenty years without the OH vote.
Small airlines like America West are able to convince their employees to basically settle for less than the big guys get, otherwise they would go out of busines. Unlike what is told at AA, its probably true. Thats the way its been done in this industry. The big guys set the rate everyone else works up to them. So lower wages put in place by the TWU at AA, thanks to OH in low cost areas, keeps most mechanics wages low across the industry. If not for the low TWU rates at AA SWA would probably be as high as UPS!
Now that UAL outsources a lot of its heavy maintenance what's the pay for the line AMT at United?
About the same as ours but they still get Holiday pay and doubletime, but then again you are comparing a bankrupt airline to one that isnt. SWA mechanics get $7/hour more than we do, they get Holiday pay, doubletime, sick time(ironically there pending legislation that would require a mimimum annual sick time allottment that surpasses our union negotiated sick time allotment)shift premiums etc.
Or for that matter those at US Air, Delta, Alaska, Northwest or ATA.
Well lets stick to those carriers that didnt go BK.The fact is in the airline business size has its advantages so its up to the workers at the biggest carriers to set the mark, the TWU and AA have consistantly lowered the mark for 20 years.
Do you honestly think that if AA had dumped all its heavy maintenance that you would not have taken a pay cut?
I think that OH should grow a pair and realize that its unlikely that AA would dump most of OH. The fact is the paycuts were targeted at the line because instead of a straight pay cut they targeted items that would have little to no impact on the average OH mech.
So under past and current conditions if there were no OH at AA line maintenace mechanics at AA would be better off. If you disagree please inform me as to what benifit line maintenance has recieved by being aligned with OH? Does that mean I hope they get rid of all OH? NO, I wish that they would realize that just because they can live comfortably in Tulsa or MCI that does not mean its good enough for everyone else. After all how would they like it if the company said that OH mechanics in El Salvador live comfortably on $5/hr so thats all they were willing to pay them in Tulsa or MCI?
Not when all the other work groups were taking pay cuts.
Like the pilots who got back 10% after just the first year?
Also, do you think that all those AMT's at TULE would just stay in Tulsa? As I said before in the past that's what a lot of them have done. However faced with the reality that there will be no recalls some will opt to bump the system.Lets say that only a third of them opt to do so. That’s still over a thousand mechanics bumping the system. Oh, and I almost forgot about AFW and the thousand AMT’s there. Maybe you don’t worry about it because you have 20+ years seniority.
Well you are basing this all on a lot of assumptions. First, would AA have gone BK and gotten rid of OH? I doubt it, but if they had we wouldnt have faired any worse, our concessions screwed those who were in BK because we gave up more outside of BK than any of those carriers had taken in BK. Our concessions sent them all back to ask for another round.
I say that the reason AA kept, and continues to keep OH is because with OSMs and the location of OH in low cost of living areas AA has enjoyed a low cost advantage for 20 years. If they outsourced they would be dumping hundreds of more aircraft into the MRO market and they no longer would have enjoyed the cost advantage they were used to. They would have to pay the same as everyone else. By bringing work in house they will end up with in house maintenace that cheaper than paying an MRO to do it plus they have the advantage of better quality control which saves operating costs down the road. UAL and other carriers never had OSMs, so in order for them to compete with AA they would have had to cut guys from $36/hr to $20/hr. That wouldnt work in SFO.
So the fact is that the pilots, while they did take cuts, took much less of a cut than we did, and they are more pissed about it than you TWU apologists are, and rightly so. The fact is they now realize they were duped, and they are getting ready to fight back. The TWU on the other hand is still in bed with the company!
Add onto that the fact that we gave up thousands of jobs and recieved zero credit for those losses and I would say its safe to say that the TWU did the worst job in the industry.
The TWU had the healtiest of all the majors to work with yet gave up more than any other and despite all that they are working with the company to increase productivity, in other words put a speedup in place, with the claim that it will give us leverage to ask for something in the future.Well management has always used that same exact ploy whenever they put a speedup in place, but they rarely deliver. The TWU endorses the speedup despite the fact that AA has over $5billion in the bank, has awarded a quarter of a billion in bonuses to their executives. The TWU is still acting like 9-11 just happened and the company is still "on the steps" of BK court. They are still promoting the scam.
I cant wait till the pilots fight back. In January of 2000 during the "Hard Copy" incident the rank and file Pilots at JFK were very cooperative, they made things easy. They wrote up everything, so all we had to do was work on what they wrote up, and then some. In 1997 the company and the TWU had successfully turned most of the other workers against the pilots. It wont work this time.
