Pensions- CEO's vs worker

[eolesen]

If you were a KISS A-- like FM,

Hmmm. You've never met me, you have no clue who I am, what I do or say, so what gives you the right to assume I'm a kiss ass?

By that measure, based on your screen name you're a three-time loser because your company went bankrupt twice on its own and had to be rescued before going under the third time?

Further, how exactly would kissing ass at AA have any bearing whatsoever on getting a job outside of AA? If I were truly a kiss ass, wouldn't I'd be promoted instantly at AA, and have potential millions or so in future earnings from stock and bonus payouts?

then you could got elsewhere and make more money....

The fact is, if you have a skill that's worth more to someone else than it is to AA or another airline, the jobs are there.

The funny part is that it wasn't even a matter of having to look -- other companies are starting to hire and expand again, and headhunters have swooped down on AMR headquarters and are cherry picking people left and right. The same is happening to a smaller degree at UAL, since most of the people with marketable skills left years ago.

I know the basic concept of supply and demand is a bit difficult to accept when you who share the same basic skillset as tens of thousands of others who have their A&P and related licenses.

If there are a hundred or so people nationwide who can do what I do, my pay gets set based on how willing the other 99 people are to leave their current employer, and how willing the new employer is to get me on their side.

I know that galls those of you who don't wield the same negotiating power to no end.

But, you get what you negotiate.

 

[Wretched Wrench]

FM..........Good bye and good luck. Leaving the airline industry is a good choice. I envy anyone who can do it well.

 

[Hopeful]

Hmmm. You've never met me, you have no clue who I am, what I do or say, so what gives you the right to assume I'm a kiss ass?

By that measure, based on your screen name you're a three-time loser because your company went bankrupt twice on its own and had to be rescued before going under the third time?

Further, how exactly would kissing ass at AA have any bearing whatsoever on getting a job outside of AA? If I were truly a kiss ass, wouldn't I'd be promoted instantly at AA, and have potential millions or so in future earnings from stock and bonus payouts?
The fact is, if you have a skill that's worth more to someone else than it is to AA or another airline, the jobs are there.

The funny part is that it wasn't even a matter of having to look -- other companies are starting to hire and expand again, and headhunters have swooped down on AMR headquarters and are cherry picking people left and right. The same is happening to a smaller degree at UAL, since most of the people with marketable skills left years ago.

I know the basic concept of supply and demand is a bit difficult to accept when you who share the same basic skillset as tens of thousands of others who have their A&P and related licenses.

If there are a hundred or so people nationwide who can do what I do, my pay gets set based on how willing the other 99 people are to leave their current employer, and how willing the new employer is to get me on their side.

I know that galls those of you who don't wield the same negotiating power to no end.

But, you get what you negotiate.

Again, you miss the point. The upper crust CEOS' and top executives are in a very exclusive club. THEY determine THEIR OWN MARKET RATE!
You like to invoke SUPPLY AND DEMAND...Ok let's invoke it!

With the help of bankruptcy courts, CEO's have slashed thousands upon thousands of A&P jobs.. This is not the result of an economical coincidence! They set out to break unions in this country. Of course you have an excess of A&P's out there with no jobs.

You keep defending these greedy fat cats..They actually have the balls to ask a bankruptcy judge for an increase in compensation for themselves and the top execs AFTER asking that same judge to throw out all labor agreements.

And you STILL defend these guys!

 

[Bob Owens]

Hmmm. You've never met me, you have no clue who I am, what I do or say, so what gives you the right to assume I'm a kiss ass?

I agree with twaokc.
We go by what you write.

 

[eolesen]

Bob, of all the things I'll miss about AA, believe me when I say that bitter malcontents like you are one thing I will gladly leave behind.

There's a lot more to life than continuing to complain about your employer and your work environment. Hopefully you'll figure that out while you still have years left to enjoy it.


Hopeful, I'm not defending the CEO's who hid behind the courts to do what they didn't have the balls to do at the bargaining table. I think the free marketplace should have been permitted to function without interference.

I absolutely abhor what the bankruptcy laws have permitted to take place over the past 30 years in the airlines. By allowing contracts to be thrown out and airlines to fly for years without paying off debtors, the courts interfered horrendously with the marketplace. Crandall has been saying this pretty consistently for about 20 years with few people paying attention.

TWA should have died 10 years before they did.

Same thing with America West, Continental, US Airways, and a bunch of other carriers.

All of those carriers who were allowed to keep operating for years in Ch.11 should have died the same painful deaths that Braniff, Frontier, and a couple dozen other airlines did, instead of being propped up by court approved raping of their employees. Even Pan Am and Eastern got stays of execution which they never should have received.

At the same time, you have to take a hard look at the role organized labor has played. Choking the golden goose until it gave up the last leg didn't work in the childrens fable or for Veruka Salt in Willy Wonka, and it certainly didn't work for any of the unions who ultimately found themselves facing a S.1113 hearing.

As much as you want to complain about what happened at AA, it's still not as bad as what would have happened with the bankruptcy court's blessing.

 

[TIME FOR CHANGE]

At the same time, you have to take a hard look at the role organized labor has played. Choking the golden goose until it gave up the last leg didn't work in the childrens fable or for Veruka Salt in Willy Wonka, and it certainly didn't work for any of the unions who ultimately found themselves facing a S.1113 hearing.

You are off your rocker. If anyone has sodomized the golden goose it has been upper management. If you dont think that is a fact you are truly a blind individual. This is corporate America raping the middle class. The overinflated salaries of these bankrupt airline execs is appaulling. The golden eggs are plenty but the upper crust has them all.

 

[Hopeful]

FM,

...You state that the unions "choked the golden goose!"
I don't recall ever having made an "obscene" wage as an aircraft mechanic. I don't think any airline employee has ever made an obscene wage, union or non-union. Nor do I think low- mid-level managers ever made an obsene wage.

But it is the corporate fat cats who collectively took advantage of the historical anti-labor events such as the firing of the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981 and Frank Lorenzo;s abusive use of the bankruptcy laws in 1983.
Then came 9-11 and they used their financial straits to finally destroy the unions in this country. But while they were doing this, the fat cats never shared in the sacrfices the rest of us did...They told the bankrputcy courts that they could no longer afford pensions and current salaries..... of the workers, but NOT THEMSELVES.
In order the survive the BK judge was urged to impose company wages and benefits on the remaining workers. This was after the tens of thousands of layoffs of airline workers.

This has nothing to do what the supply and demand of the airline worker compared to the CEO and Execs.

This was all about breaking the backs of unions and reminding the surviving workers that they are just lucky to still be employed.

 

[Oneflyer]

You are off your rocker. If anyone has sodomized the golden goose it has been upper management. If you dont think that is a fact you are truly a blind individual. This is corporate America raping the middle class. The overinflated salaries of these bankrupt airline execs is appaulling. The golden eggs are plenty but the upper crust has them all.

considering that the middle class are the ones benefiting from low fares you're a bit off the mark. I don't disagree that CEO pay is overinflated but your numbers are a bit off.

1. As far as airline goes, employees gave up BILLIONs and upper management got MILLIONS, the ratio is probably about 50 to 1, so that money is just going somewhere else.

2. As far as CEO pay genericly, most CEOs getting insane payouts work for very profitable companies. The employees of Phizer, Exxon, and others are being paid quite well. They aren't taking pay cuts. Don't take your situtation and assume that it is happening to everyone else.

 

[TIME FOR CHANGE]

considering that the middle class are the ones benefiting from low fares you're a bit off the mark. I don't disagree that CEO pay is overinflated but your numbers are a bit off.

1. As far as airline goes, employees gave up BILLIONs and upper management got MILLIONS, the ratio is probably about 50 to 1, so that money is just going somewhere else.

2. As far as CEO pay genericly, most CEOs getting insane payouts work for very profitable companies. The employees of Phizer, Exxon, and others are being paid quite well. They aren't taking pay cuts. Don't take your situtation and assume that it is happening to everyone else.

I think you need to re-read the first post of this topic

 

[Oneflyer]

I think you need to re-read the first post of this topic

Once again, you are taking statements made about other companies and applying them to your own, without knowing whether they apply to AA.

 

[AMFAMAN]

I wonder what the executive pension liabilities of AA and other airlines are?

Two pages in and no reply from our finance guru's on this question. Does anyone know the answer?

 

[TIME FOR CHANGE]

Once again, you are taking statements made about other companies and applying them to your own, without knowing whether they apply to AA.

You must have been a race horse in your previous life.
Take the blinders off all ready h34r: h34r: h34r:

 

[FWAAA]

Two pages in and no reply from our finance guru's on this question. Does anyone know the answer?

Only one page for me - my settings are 40 posts per page.

Dunno the answer, of course, because AA doesn't separately disclose the number (management pension costs v. hourly worker pension costs) in the 10-K. Someone with lots of initiative could reconstruct the top individuals' pay packages by reviewing the exhibits in the SEC reports, but too boring for me to undertake.

Suffice it to say that the number is probably much higher than you think it should be and that there's really nothing anyone can do about it. Executives generally make a lot more money than their hourly slaves, both in current compensation and retirement benefits.

 

[AMFAMAN]

Dunno the answer, of course, because AA doesn't separately disclose the number (management pension costs v. hourly worker pension costs) in the 10-K.

Thanks for the answer anyway--wasn't sure anyone was listening.

Maybe I'll ask my company-union to hire someone to research this.

 

[eolesen]

I'm not in Finance but there are a couple line items you can probably look for on page 22 of the DEF-14A, which is essentially the proxy statement sent out in advance of the annual shareholders meeting.

Executives participate in the same pension plan as the rest of the agents, management, and support staff, so that is not really broken out. But, there's also a maximum amount that can be accrued in the standard plan under IRS and ERISA guidelines.

Anything above that goes into the infamous SERP, which covers the non-PBGC insured portion of their pensions.

I don't know if that has been funded above what was put in during SerpGate, but the average payout per executive is listed on Page 22.

If you want to do the math, go for it, but for the two executives with the highest salary and years of service (Arpey and Garton), it doesn't appear that any executive currently at AMR will earn a pension in excess of $700K per year.

Yes, that's a lot of money (far more than anyone would reasonably require to live on in retirement), but it's also 10% or so of what all of the executives mentioned in the article are earning, so try to keep the fat cat paintbrush in perspective a bit. AMR is extremely restrained when compared to others in the Fortune 100.