US Air pilots turn on management

[USA320Pilot]

US Air pilots turn on management

Union says the airline is not properly handling pension problems, objects to larger jets on order

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Representatives for US Airways Group's unionized pilots passed a vote of no confidence in the airline's senior management, a union spokesman said Friday, warning that relations between pilots and the airline could turn heated.

Charging US Airways with trying to navigate around its employee contracts, a committee of 12 pilot representatives unanimously voted on Wednesday to express no confidence in US Airways' executives, the spokesman said.

The union objected to the airline's handling of pension problems, and also believes some jets the carrier has ordered recently are larger than those the pilots have approved.

This no confidence vote means the relationship between the [Air Line Pilots Association] and US Airways is going to become one of a more legal, combative nature, union spokesman Roy Freundlich said Friday. There will be a significant elevation of legal activity.

US Airways spokesman David Castelveter said the airline was disappointed its pilots found the vote useful.

This management team has taken an airline that was left for dead and implemented a restructuring plan that has preserved more than 30,000 jobs and given it a chance for success, Castelveter said.

US Airways' pilots agreed to about $650 million per year in wage cuts and other types of concessions to help the No. 7 domestic airline rise out of bankruptcy at the end of March. Other labor groups pitched in for a total of about $1 billion in annual cuts.

Pilots also say Arlington, Va.-based airline is not making steps to find a remedy through Congress for its pension woes, which forced it to terminate its pilots' earlier pension plan and replace it with slimmer payouts.

US Airways' Castelveter said the airline still supports a legislative solution, as long as it fits within the economic framework the carrier established during its restructuring.

 

[Busdrvr]

----------------
On 5/24/2003 1242 PM N628AU wrote:


I wonder what the ALPA response will be when the judge asks what is the problem when half of the seats are occupied by U ALPA members?

----------------​

Uh, "only half the seats are occupied by U ALPA members."?

 

[N628AU]

Have fun ALPA. By the time this works through any grievance/legal proceeding, those jets will be online and furloughed employees working them. I wonder what the ALPA response will be when the judge asks what is the problem when half of the seats are occupied by U ALPA members?

 

[Twicebaked]

----------------
On 5/24/2003 1242 PM N628AU wrote:


Have fun ALPA.  By the time this works through any grievance/legal proceeding, those jets will be online and furloughed employees working them.  I wonder what the ALPA response will be when the judge asks what is the problem when half of the seats are occupied by U ALPA members?

----------------

That may be true that things may already be going through once the grienvences are completed, but someone has to put a stop to this "hitler" type managment. I hope that all labor groups realize that this company does not only consist of flight attendants and pilots. Are we the only one''s that are fed up? I wouldn''t think so.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO DO INFORMATIONAL PICKETING. WE HAVE BEEN RAPED FOR THE LAST TIME FROM THIS MANAGMENT.

 

[Phoenix]

There is only one reason the MEC finally voted "no confidence" after they gave several billion dollars to MGT (without pilot ratification.)

And it is the same reason the Nets Most Prolific Poster is back in action.

Recal.

 

[LavMan]

Dave all ready got everything from you, you sound like the vichy french, your a day late and a dollar short.

 

[FlyingHippie]

Crickey I thought the commute to LGA would keep Chip silent. Anyway, Siegel is a Deleted and this vote of no confidence is long overdue. We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.

 

[N628AU]

----------------
On 5/24/2003 349 PM FlyingHippie wrote:

Siegel is a DELETED and this vote of no confidence is long overdue.

----------------​

Ah yes, resorting to name calling.  Very professional.  This kind of attitude is why labor at US always comes out losing.

 

[Twicebaked]

----------------
On 5/24/2003 3:52:16 PM LavMan wrote:


Dave all ready got everything from you, you sound like the vichy french, your a day late and a dollar short.

----------------​

Lavman,
NO DAVE DID NOT GET EVERYTHING HE WANTS!!!! They willbe/ are back for more. You mark those words. Once again, we all must say ENOUGH! Why is it that other airlines are adding/reinstating, but US is continuing to cry about revenue? Obviously, they are doing something wrong. Continuing to BEAT UP on labor is only going to make it worse. There was a post on here before about a "sick out". I am all for that.

 

[LavMan]

Go ask the APA over at AA how well that went down, it just about bankrupted their union, they had to cut a deal with AA in order to pay the court imposed fines.


In February of this year, pilots at American airlines staged a "sick out". While the terms of their contract meant that they could not stage a strike, on February 6, several pilots called in sick as an excuse for not going to work, and the sick out spread spontaneously to some 2,500 pilots, affecting nearly 6,700 flights over ten days. Now pilots are not exactly the most downtrodden members of the working class, but after years of bitter contract disputes, this action clearly showed that they were determined one way or another not to bow before the owners of the airline.

At issue was the purchase by AMR Corp., America Airlines' parent company, of Reno Airlines, a small regional company that flies mostly in the Western United States. The contract between American and the Allied Pilots Association, the independent union that represents American's 9,200 pilots, explicitly states that all American Airlines pilots be represented by the same union, and that they all be on the same pay scale. The pilots and their union demanded that all Reno Airlines pilots be integrated with American airlines as of Dec. 23, 1998, the date of the purchase, and that their salaries be raised accordingly. The company refused, claiming that it could take up to 18 months and that they would raise the salaries of the new pilots once they were retrained to "American standards". Of course, this raised fears among the pilots and their union that AMR would use Reno airlines as a way of transferring American flying to the lower-paid pilots. Of course, as we all know, no corporation has ever done anything like that before!

Enter Judge Joe Kendall of the U.S. District Court in Dallas, who was appointed by President George Bush in 1992. At the company's request, he issued a temporary restraining order on the pilots on Feb 10. But the next day the number of names on the sick list grew even higher! Judge Kendall found the union, union president Richard Lavoy and, union vice president Brian Mayhew, in contempt of court, and ordered the union to place $10 million in escrow. LaVoy placed $10,000 with the court and Mayhew remitted $5,000.

On Thursday, April 15, in one of the largest assessments made against a union, Judge Kendall fined the APA nearly $46 million - the union only has $38 million in assets! This amounts to no less than an attempt to wipe out the union by using the "law".

According to American Airlines, it lost between $58.7 and $50.1 million during the sick out. But Geoffrey Heal, an economist at Columbia University, and Robert Mann Jr., an airline industry analyst, both testified for the union Monday that the losses they had calculated range between $1.4 million and about $4.5 million, depending on the time period considered. The Union argued that only 233 pilots called in sick after the contempt citation.


According to Tom Juravich, director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, "This fine is really unprecedented in American labor history and represents a level of accountability for unions that's never really been applied." He pointed out that a $52 million fine imposed against the United Mineworkers Union in connection with a coal strike was vacated by the Supreme Court in its 1993-94 term.

The New York Times states:

"Even before the damages were announced, many pilots were worried that the judge might try to wipe out the union. Some pilots have been openly discussing joining the Air Line Pilots Association, a much larger national union that is a member of the AFL-CIO and has more power in Washington.

In any case, pilots said that if the company tried to destroy the union, it would make the next round of contract negotiations with the airline that much more difficult."

So whose side is the law on? The facts should be obvious to anyone. Under pressure from the company, this "impartial" judge imposed first a restraining order on what was in effect the personal health of the pilots, and then a nearly unprecedented fine on the relatively weak union. His hypocrisy is pathetically revealed in these quotes from the

New York Times:

"What my oath requires me to do makes me sick to my stomach because a lot of decent men and woman pilots are going to be hurt by this."

And:

"American Airlines is not going to want to go to the public and the stockholders and talk about taking that kind of hit [losses of over $50 million] without it being true."

His words should make any labor activist "sick to my stomach"! Amazingly, the fact that the stock market is watching the results of the dispute somehow means that the company is telling the truth! This is truly blind justice! In future cases we need only check how the stock market reacts to find the "truth"!

Or these words from Chris Chiames, an AMR spokesman:

"We don't take any pleasure in all this. We have been searching for labor peace with all of our labor groups in recent years. It is a shame that the APA is dominated by a leadership that is only interested in confrontation and that they led their members into an illegal job action."

They do not want to acknowledge that the pilots for the most part acted spontaneously in defense of their standard of living, and rather resort to the tried and true "conspiracy theory" view of history and movements of the working class. In the same way, bourgeois historians accuse Lenin and company of being a tiny band of "conspirators" with no broad support among the masses. Of course, how they managed to repel 21 foreign armies and countless reactionary elements within Russia with just their "little band of conspirators" is a mystery.

The Allied Pilots Association can appeal the case, and they claim that they are a long way from being wiped out, in spite of the fact that they do not have the $46 million. However, the real lesson here is that the law is almost always on the side of the ruling class. As an integral part of our three-branch system government, the judicial system is as Marx put it, "but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

However, it is promising that even pilots, who are generally considered a relatively well-off layer of the working class are moving towards more aggressive and even "illegal" activity in asserting their demands. After all, the class struggle is in the final analysis nothing but the struggle between the producers and the exploiters for the surplus value created by the producing classes. The resolve by the pilots to "make the next round of contract negotiations with the airline that much more difficult", and to perhaps move towards affiliation with a larger and stronger union, is a further sign that the relative calm of the past few years is beginning to end. The unprecedented economic boom (deceptive though it may be) has been achieved largely on the backs of the workers, and they are beginning to demand a larger share of the fruits of their labor.

 

[LavMan]

Work by the book. Work Safe.

 

[Twicebaked]

GEEEEZ Lavman,
   LOL....Do you have a better suggestion then?  This managment has hit is in our wallets since they came on board.  We need to get a STERN message that WE ARE THROUGH and that YOU WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE.  Grievences aren't working, but something has too.  Can't the BOD see this *deleted*

 

[LavMan]

----------------
On 5/24/2003 840 PM NAPAUS wrote:

LOL no thats laughable LAV MAn, no disrespect but this from someones who cleans ariplanes...theres a BIG difference than cleaning and flying airplanes ..and NO IM NOT a pilot..they are doing what they need to do and so most other groups like f/as and mechanics...

----------------​

Guess you never read the appearance manual and I guess you don't realize Utility does the required security checks mandated by the FAA. No RON nor any international or island flights get boarded or the F/As get on the airplane until the Utility signs off the security check has been completed.

 

[NAPAUS]

LOL no thats laughable LAV MAn, no disrespect but this from someones who cleans ariplanes...theres a BIG difference than cleaning and flying airplanes ..and NO IM NOT a pilot..they are doing what they need to do and so most other groups like f/as and mechanics...

 

[Bob Owens]

----------------
On 5/24/2003 7:06:58 PM Twicebaked wrote:


GEEEEZ Lavman,
LOL....Do you have a better suggestion then? This managment has hit is in our wallets since they came on board. We need to get a STERN message that WE ARE THROUGH and that YOU WILL NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. Grievences aren''t working, but something has too. Can''t the BOD see this *deleted*

----------------

​

Risk the money in the Union Treasury. Thats what its there for. You got to have a pair. Remember what Labor Leader Mike Quill told the Judge during the 1966 NYC Transit Strike. The judge issued an order forbidding a strike. Quill respoded that if there was no agreement there would be a strike, he said that the judge could "drop dead in his long black robes". There was no agreement, the union struck and Quill went to jail. Putting Quill in jail did not get the trains moving again and the city was paralized. The union recieved its best offer ever.

Look if a Judge unfairly fines a union then all unions should react. The Union should refuse to pay, the leaders should go to jail if neccesary, and the members should support their leaders by withholding their labor. Its a simple concept, its called solidarity. Solidarity in the form of massive civil disobedience to the corporate controlled government. Lech Walesa did it in Poland against a corrupt government and is recognized as a hero. I''m sure those in Poland those who were the benificiaries of the corruption did not see him as a hero.

Unfortunately todays business unions are not really interested in challenging the system. They would rather complain and blame their members for not giving enough to COPE or voting for the wrong candidates. The APA is vulnerable because they are Independant, the ALPA wants their dues.

You guys should do whatever you need to do.

Hey Chip, is Seigal still the White Knight?