The Nomadic Mechanic

[N628AU]

Bob Owens...

I do not believe you work at US. So shut up. The mechanic and related did what it needed to do. All other groups took their cuts, and the DIP financing and ATSB loan was in jeopardy if either a ratification or 1113 abrogation did not come. No 6 year concessions from vendors? Well how about the fact that leases being negotiated with lessors are five year rolling leases? The judge would have most likely ruled for the company seeing the alternative was liquidation and the judge has not turned down a single request (90% chance he would have abrogated the contract IMO). You are just scared because your carrier is probably next to face cuts. It is easy to ask someone else to risk their job, much more so than making a choice yourself. Why should I risk my job for you? You are the competition, and while I hate to see anyone lose their job or take a paycut, I am not going to base my life around around what theoretically may happen to someone at another carrier. Do I like taking cuts in pay and vacation? No, but I believe Dave is different than most CEOs, and this is my chosen career, so I am willing to take a chance on him. Sure beats having Wal-Mart greeter on my resume. I humbly ask, please go back under the rock you came from.

 

[AOG-N-IT]

N628AU, All this repressed anger is going to kill you.

 

[N628AU]

Repressed anger, liver failure, whatever.

 

[Bob Owens]

Lakeguy;
Again you claim to know what the arbitrator would have ruled. Where is the precedence of a judge abrogating a labor agreement under Chapter 11 since the new rules were put in effect? Last best offers usually change as the midnight hour approaches. 6 years is an excessively long period of time to exact concessions. Look at it this way, that little 6th grader will be in college by the time this contract becomes amendable, that newborn will be going into second grade. If you have six or seven weeks vacation losing one may not be a big deal but what if you only have two? That little concession means you will be working an extra month and a half for free.
The requirements of the ATSB are arbitrary. Faced with the loss of service and jobs politicians would have pushed to change the ATSB requirements. During the APA strike in 97 the White House kept telling the pilots that they would be walking away from their six figure incomes if they did not come to an agreement. At the midnight hour the President changed his mind. The pilots did not believe it so they went on strike for several minutes until the President could send official word of the PEB. The fact is, even things that are written in stone do change. What if USAIR had asked for a 20-year contract?
I doubt that it would have been as simple as, Oh the mechanics will not agree to six years of concessions so lets close the doors. Come on, where is the logic? Are you saying that if the mechanics had held out for a year-to-year agreement the whole company would have been scrapped? The ATSB was supposedly founded to restore stability to air transportation. Somewhere along the way its mission changed to insuring that the airlines could produce profits above the norm. This administration has been hostile to airline labor since day one. The ATSB is simply a tool to exact wage concessions from labor, but when push comes to shove and a large section of the country is going to lose access to air transportation a lot of other things get thrown into the mix.

How realistic are the chances that profit sharing or stock options will make up for what they are losing in real wages? We had Profit Sharing at AA. The formula was heavily weighted towards those who made the most. The average worker saw pennies on the dollar. Will USAIR employees have the right to sell their stock at any time?

As far as your scope language goes, good, but what guarantee is there that if the company does not meet its objectives that they wont come back for that? You already changed your pay scales and gave up vacations that were guaranteed in the contract. TWA workers also had succesorship clauses. When the IAM was faced with a possible liability of TWA defaulting on the pension, they waived the clause. Like I said, things change.

“Plus Bob, AA, NW, UA and DL are all laying off yet none of those employees have agreed to concessions, so what is the cause of that?â€

I don’t really understand your question. I never said that concessions cause layoffs; I said that concessions wont prevent them.

Layoffs? Our local is larger now than it’s ever been. But I’ll admit, that could change if the economy doesn’t get better and more people start flying.

The fact is that you as an editor of Victory News worked hard to sell the concessions. Behind an alias you mongered fear. Officially the IAM remained neutral but instead of working on possible options and an alternate strategy they, and you only put forth the worst-case scenario. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have informed their members of the worst of possible outcomes but that is all they offered them. They should have had some alternate plan and told of other possible outcomes so they could have made a fully informed decision. Two years down the road this shortcoming will likely come back to haunt the IAM, and it should. They failed to lead.

N628AU;
Too bad, this is an open forum.
Sure Dave is different, he’s a Saint who has come to USAIR to save you. In four years if you go to AA or UA, to start at the bottom again and he retires before he’s 50 with the millions he gets out of U lets see what you think then. Baaah, Baaah.

 

[Lakeguy67]

[P] [/P]

 

[N628AU]

[blockquote]
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On 10/8/2002 809 PM Bob Owens wrote:


N628AU;
Too bad, this is an open forum.
Sure Dave is different, he’s a Saint who has come to USAIR to save you. In four years if you go to AA or UA, to start at the bottom again and he retires before he’s 50 with the millions he gets out of U lets see what you think then. Baaah, Baaah.

----------------
[/blockquote]

I have good friends at both carriers, but I notice there seem to be more of your type at both. I'd get out of the industry most likely if that happened. I'll be able to retire to the Caymans when one of you two tries to fork over $60 a share again. I'd especially quit if it were AA. They have as good a track record in mergers/acquisitions as U does. AirCal, Reno, TWA. AA may have blown more cash on buying someone then figuring out they cannot run it than U ever did. At least we only truly dismantled PSA. We only half destroyed Piedmont.

 

[RDU Jetblast]

I have heard about the bump system at U. It always seemed barbaric and a lose-lose situation to me. When I worked for DAL it was a little more humane. Once you were in a station, you were there for good unless you were laid off. If noone voluntarily transferred into your position, mechanics in the laid off pool were recalled wherever there was an opening based on seniority. Your home station was given priority. This kept morale from sinking any lower than it usually is during hard times. DAL was never perfect but I was always thankful for not having to worry about being bumped. It seems like unnecessary stress. Good luck.

 

[Bob Owens]

N628AU;
If AA & UA are so poorly run then why is USAIR the first to go Bankrupt? Why do you have guys that only get one week of vacation? Even most non-union workers get two weeks vacation! For every 50 guys that have one less week of vacation there is one more guy on layoff. How many mechanics does USAIR have? 6000? By giving back the week of vacation you facilitated the layoff of an additional 120 mechanics.The same goes for all the other departments.So was this all about just saving the jobs of the senior employees?
I've never heard of a retro-concession!

If the letter from your CEO on the other thread is genuine it seems that U will be coming back for more concessions. While your wages and vacation allotments were not onerous because they were pretty much industry average, from what I've heard some of your work rules are not. You would have had an easier time keeping your wages and vacation in front of the Judge than those work rules. Frank Lorenzo started off with the nice guy approach at first also. It seems that Dave is following the same approach.
I agree that the aquisitions were a bad idea. First AA bought AIR Cal (they were fully dovetailed), later droped most of the routes then a few years later bought the same routes again with Reno (nonunion- stapled).But I'm glad that I chose the airline I did. I still get all my vacation, and make more than I would if I had gone to USAIR.

Lets see how you feel about Dave in another year or so.

 

[N628AU]

Bob Owens...

Obviously, you do not understand how this whole thing unfolded, so I will remind you one more time. The Company came to the labor groups and said we need XXX dollars in labor cost savings. The unions could come up with any pland they wanted to, it just needed to meet that figure. Blame the IAM for the vacation snafu, the first proposal the Company put on the table had only 1 week of vacation being given up for only 1 year. Where did the extra come from? Ask the IAM. Ask the IAM why they beat on their chests bragging about not giving up R & D, even though the Company valued it at $2 an hour. Ask the IAM why they spent the entire week before the Company filed at some conference (read: week of golf), instead of finalizing a deal, which is why we got a take or leave it proposition. Ask the IAM why fleet service was allowed to take 2 days of unpaid holiday pay, instead of 16 weeks of retro. You see, my problem is not with the Company. Ask AOG-N-IT, our department did not ask for representation, nor did we have a choice in getting it. That being said, I refuse to let any of this affect my outlook on life anyway. I still have a job, in my chosen industry (though I probably need to get my head examined for choosing it), and I can always make more money. As for the letter discussed in the other thread, I take it for what is worth, something posted on the internet. Big freakin deal. I am sure a year from now I will feel the same way. If anything worse happens, itis probably due to circumstances outside anyone's control, be it a drawn out military action in the Middle East, or the economy slipping back into recession. Either way, life will go on, and I am sure we will never be co-workers. BTW, when do your paycuts come? Don't believe they won't, we are just the first to feel it.

 

[Bob Owens]

N628AU;
As I understand it USAIR made an application to the ATSB for a loan guarantee of $1Billion. In the application THEY set certain goals for concessions from their workers. They received approval based on those and other concessions and then basically told the Union that the ATSB required the concessions. The ATSB simply bought off on USAIRs proposal. They didnt write it.Thats why I believe that you should have held out for a year to year agreement. If you had voted NO, where does it say that the ATSB would have to reject the loan guarantee? The Board has a lot of discretion.When you consider that one member of the Board (Chairman)was appointed by Allen Greenspan (described by the IAM as the Dream Stealer)and another by O'Neil it should be expected that they would do whatever they could to crush labor. The third member was appointed by Mineta. However the Board would recognize that for every dollar spent in aviation 2 extra dollars are generated to to the overall economy, and right now the economy needs any good news it can get. The closing of USAIR weeks before the elections because the Republican appionted Board (2/3s of the board is made up of Cabinet member appointees) set terms that were too difficult to reach would have political implications. Remember Bush has been investing a lot in trying to gain support in PA. Pitt is a big USAIR hub. The closing of USAIR could cost the Republicans PA. I doubt that Bush would have allowed that at this time.