Ok, so whats the number? How many mechanics must remain on payroll? You are the one that claims theres a limit, but the fact is as the old planes leave and work goes away the company can continue to outsource as jobs dissapear. So the more they save and lower total costs, or the more they spend on parts or line maint the more heads they can cut on OH.
So when a rotable part is repaired how is the cost put on the books?
Ok, Lets say expendable parts make up 15% of the Total maint costs. Just a guess, and labor makes up the other 85%. thats 100%. So the company is allowed to outsource labor up to a limit of 35% of the total costs. So if total costs are( lets say for easy numbers) $1 billion they can outsource $350million worth of labor. So out of the $850 million in labor costs they can spend $350 million on outsourced labor-so right off the bat thats 41% of labor costs outsourced. So can you can see how including parts hurts us and allows the company to outsource more than 35% of the labor costs? The higher the cost for parts the more labor they can send out. If Parts made up 30% of total costs then they could outsource 50% of labor costs. But other factors can greatly increase the amount of job los beyond those numbers.
While $350 million may only buy 3,500,000 hours in Tulsa or 1,682 FTE mechanics it may buy 7 million hours in Malaysia which would allow the company to eliminate 3364 FTE jobs in Tulsa instead of 1,682.. Volume of work drives the man hours, and jobs, but we arent limiting volume per se, we are limiting outsourced spend, so the cheaper they can find labor outside of the TWU, including workers who work for AA such as in South America, the more of our jobs they can eliminate. Then as new planes come in, and the volume of work shrinks, even more jobs can be eliminated while they continue to outsource 35% of the Maint spend. With system protection it would get to the point where unless they wanted to pay people so just show up, they would have to bring work back in house, our peers have this at UAL and even USAIR, defined limits as to the amount of workers who could not be firred, but we dont. there is no defined limit as to the people whose jobs can be eliminated. If they are in danger of going over the 35% and getting caught, they can stock up on parts to meet the 65% but as far as OH labor being outsourceed they could under certain conditions outsource all of it under the so called "job saving ' language you endorsed.
Basically the more money spent on any part of the 65% whether its line maint labor or parts, the more OH they can outsource, the cap for the line which is indutry leading as far as being inferior, is still better defined, at 15% of line maint, than it is for OH. 100% of OH could be outsourced if Line maint costs and parts go up enough and they can find labor cheap enough anywhere in the world.
Instead of saving OH we gave management everything they needed to get rid of all of it.
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I was involved in the whole thing, were you? I heard from the mother who could not get an apartment and the others who were blown away by how expensive it was. The reason why they were able to get back is because the company hoodwinked them into going there and started upgrading people locally in Texas after forcing them to go to NY if they wanted the upgrade.
