Almost any company or bankruptcy Judge would prefer a consensual agreement to one imposed through 1113 proceedings (Lorenzo is the one exception I can think of off the top of my head). A consensual agreement leaves no questions dangling - can employees strike, do negotiations just keep going after abrogation, etc. Plus employees are generally better off with a consensual agreement, as distasteful as that agreement may be. If nothing else, they get a say in how the cuts are distributed among various contract items - lose less vacation in exchange for less paid sick time or whatever.
That's why there are few agreements that were abrogated despite all the legacy carriers except CO going through bankruptcy in the last decade.
Jim
And when Lorenzo abrogated the deal the pilots struck.
We are at the bottom of the barrell, no one else is.
We are dead last in hourly pay
We are dead last in sick time-5 days
We are dead last in Vacation, 1 week for the first five years and we lag the rest of the industry till we get to 30 years, and they want to take that away.
Dead last on OT-we never get 2x
We are dead last in Holidays-5
We are dead last as far as the rate paid if worked on the Holiday-we get half pay to work
with the companys proposals we would add the following;
Dead last as far as pension, the 401k match would only be on 2080 hours
Dead last as far as retiree medical-employee pays 100%
Dead last as far as Health benifits-we would pay more and have higher deductibles
Dead last as far as Job Security
Dead last as far work rules-we would be no better off than non-union
We would have the worst contract in the industry and why? Because $2.8 billion is enough of a profit to attract investment? We should agree to this so they can walk away with a 17% profit margin!!! Is that what C-11 was intended for?
Like I said if AA wants a deal from us then they have to be realistic. We have to keep our system protection,if they want to cut heads I'm ok with that as long as they do it though a buyout like UAL had and attrition, so we may have to flex on the scope and let them outsource. We have no problem making AA "competitive" as long as we arent expected to work for substandard compensation to do it. Just because they jumped into BK doesnt change the fact that we are already at the bottom and there is no way I'm going to agree to endorse $210 million in concessions. They need to drop their unrealistic demands and instead approach the areas of the contract where they believe they are at a disadvantage. As you can see from the list above there arent too many areas left where they dont enjoy an advantage over competitors.