I remember when AA came out with the B-scales in the early 1980s. I was at EAL at the time. The difference is that the incumbent employees at AA on payroll took no cuts in terms of rate of pay, while all incumbent employees at EA,PA, and TWA took paycut after paycut. With the B-scale and the large cheap order for MD-80s, AA greatly expanded it's system creating more jobs with more Crew Cheifs (with crew chief pay) and better days off (Sat,Sun) for it's incumbent employees. This also allowed AA to bring it's average labor costs down (with the poor B-scalers literally doing all the pulling). The 2003 concessions was the first time AA employees took a cut in the rate of pay. As far as paying some of the cost of benefits, AA was just ahead of the times. At EAL we paid absolutely nothing. You went to the doctor or hospital then submitted your bill to administraion and EAL paid it. Almost all companies today require some sort of contribution on the employees part. The long time AA employee hired before the early 1980s clearly did much better over time than the AA employees hired after the early 1980s. I guess it just depends on what group of people and time frame you look at. You also state that the average NW AMT was about $120k to $130k ahead of the AA AMT when he walked out at NW. If that is the case then the AA will catch up in two years and will be significantly ahead 5 to 10 years down the road.
Station closures
- Thread starter Hopeful
- Start date
I remember when AA came out with the B-scales in the early 1980s. I was at EAL at the time. The difference is that the incumbent employees at AA on payroll took no cuts in terms of rate of pay, while all incumbent employees at EA,PA, and TWA took paycut after paycut. With the B-scale and the large cheap order for MD-80s, AA greatly expanded it's system creating more jobs with more Crew Cheifs (with crew chief pay) and better days off (Sat,Sun) for it's incumbent employees. This also allowed AA to bring it's average labor costs down (with the poor B-scalers literally doing all the pulling). The 2003 concessions was the first time AA employees took a cut in the rate of pay. As far as paying some of the cost of benefits, AA was just ahead of the times. At EAL we paid absolutely nothing. You went to the doctor or hospital then submitted your bill to administraion and EAL paid it. Almost all companies today require some sort of contribution on the employees part. The long time AA employee hired before the early 1980s clearly did much better over time than the AA employees hired after the early 1980s. I guess it just depends on what group of people and time frame you look at. You also state that the average NW AMT was about $120k to $130k ahead of the AA AMT when he walked out at NW. If that is the case then the AA will catch up in two years and will be significantly ahead 5 to 10 years down the road.
It means that they would have to have zero income for two years in order for us to catch up. As far as us being way ahead 5 to 10 years from now thats also unlikely as most have moved on. Now should we compare how we are doing against SWA? Over the next 5 to 10 years they will be around $120,000 to $240,000 ahead of us. If you add in the last 5 years, at least anoth $60,000, it comes out to nearly $300,000.
What if SW decides to replace their AMTs like NW did to theirs? After all, they have only about 1500 as to where NWA had about 4400 just before the strike.
Parity, we were the first to give, rather capitulate. M&R's labor contract has always been the standard that other airlines wanted to lower their costs to. So parity, we gave first and forced the others hands to catch up to our lower costs. The only exception was USAir whose first cut was no where close to ours.
MCI transplant
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- Jun 4, 2003
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<_< Hey people!!! Wake up here!---- Did you all read what our new CFO just put out??? Your arguing about what happened in the past, when you should be seeing what's coming at us "NOW!" And believe me when I say it's not over yet!!! :angry:
