I hear the excuse of returning DL M/L rampers to contracted stations as being too expensive, what a crock, when they know darn well that when they decide to open any stations to BW (ramp) employees 50% will be Ready Reserve (no benefits, restricted hours worked yearly) and 50% will be divided between Full Time and part time employees at WHATEVER ratio Delta so desires.
It wasn't to long ago that an airline making tens of millions in profit was cause for celebration, and we were fighting tooth and nail to put that one passengers butt on our aircraft seat (all while competing against a dozen or more airlines back in the early Eighties).
They told Congress that less competition was better, they got what they wanted, what excuse do they have now, 4 major airlines, a couple of strong players less than half the size of the legacies.
If Anderson wants to expand the brand, he should start by getting more D E L T A mainline ramp employees in stations that have the flights to warrant them.
and yet DL's competitors - all of whom have unionized ramp - are eliminating locations where the ramp is worked by their own employees.
it would dramatically help your argument if AA, UA and WN were increasing the number of stations where their own employees work the ramp but that isn't happening.
Hard to expect DL to raise the bar with your arguments for unions when unionized carriers aren't doing it.
AA's labor cost is going to increase because of PMUS employees were, some how, paid less than what AA was getting in most work groups. This is something Parker knew would happen and is okay with it happening. AA is well below their peers for pay in every work group. Your little "fact" is completely pointless.
thats not flexibility. Even if it is you have to be a special kind of stupid to keep that flexibility when a company has stations with 40-50 flights that are worked by DGS. Flexibility doesn't do anyone any good when your at home jobless.
All it takes is one management change, and I think it'll happen if the president of Delta becomes CEO, and we are back to Ron Allens plan of DGSing the hubs below wing. That could happen, has come very close to happening before (well it did happen, Dallas did go DGS on the ramp) tomorrow if Richard wanted to. Couldn't happen at AA or UA.
If only Delta thought that way.
The more contractors the better is their tag line.
With all this mainline growth WT keeps talking about though you'd think they would be bringing in guys everyday. How many jobs does Delta have open in Atlanta? none. Now if those 717s were getting overhauls done in-house i bet they would be hiring people. Not much mainline growth when your outsourcing as much as you can........
if you'd like to talk about BK, the simple fact is that a smaller percentage of DL employees lost their jobs in Bk than any other airline from 9/11 until each carrier's BK except AA... and we haven't seen the effect of AA yet.
AA maintenance did have a higher percentage of in-house maintenance but they are outsourcing most of the maintenance on their new aircraft so the number of mechanics is bound to go down over time. It is hardly consolation to argue that AA mechanics are gaining overhauls on aircraft that the company intends to replace with new aircraft.
And the reason why AA's labor costs is going up is NOT just because US employees were underpaid; AA's own employees are receiving pay raises in return for their support of the merger.
Let's see what the cost of the new labor agreements that AA is announcing are. if there is no increase in costs, then you seriously have to wonder what the unions accomplished. if there is no loss of jobs, then AA will continually to be grossly overstaffed.
IF, as is expected, AA's unions did gain some pay raises in return for less job security, then the likely result is that AA's labor costs will go up in exchange for fewer jobs and the ability for the company to integrate labor.
The notion that AA accepted higher pay for existing workers while maintaining jobs while the labor unions achieved both is incompatible wth long term financial viability for AA.
The proof will be in the results and the chances are very high that AA is exchanging higher labor costs for the ability to peacefully integrate their workforces - something UA did not do - but the end result is likely that AA and UA will both lose a significant chunk of their cost competitiveness with other carriers.
The best part of this industry is that everything happens in such a public way that everyone eventually knows exactly what happened
