TWA FFB/Aviators - anyone doing anything for your favorite TWA employees on Nov. 30th?

Hi all-

We are trying to decide what do for our TWA friends in Seattle that have been so kind to us in the past. I think flowers are nice, but these guys are going to be out of a job on Dec. 2. I'm always bringing them chocolates and treats, but am trying to give them a thank you present that will be useful and heartfelt. Any thoughts?

lala

Why are they going to be out of a job on December 2?

I'm not aware of any mass layoffs of TWA airport personnel on that date. My understanding is that other than those employees being furloughed due to airline-wide cutbacks, all other employees will continue to be employed.

Greg

The word here is that most of the SEA employees will be laid-off on Dec 2. They start on Dec. 1 and expect lay offs immediately. AA has cut tons of flights out of seattle and laid off alot of their own ground staff and the TWA employees are pretty low on the totem pole.

GregL-From my viewpoint of a TWA Aviator, there will be mass layoffs of TWA personnel on Dec 2. Here in NYC, some of the TWA JFK personnel have been transferred to LGA, and on that date they will no longer have jobs. Others will become part-timers. I suspect the same will occur in LAX where we recently heard that what formerly were TWA flights will be going into terminal 4, AA's terminal, rather than terminal 3, which about 15 years ago was almost solely occupied by TWA. I suspect the same will be occurring throughout the system as TWA is assimilated into AA. Perhaps in STL it is not as gloomy, as AA has a very small presence.

Outside of JFK, I'm still a little dubious about mass TWA employee layoffs on December 2 for several reasons:

1) I'm wondering why something has not been said by an employee on other message boards such as PlaneBusiness (before the shutdown) or Smilin' Jacks.

2) Until 01/01/02, TWA employees are still covered by their current contracts which I think would have some protections against outsourcing their jobs -- which I imagine is what this would be considered until the TWA workers lose their current representation.

Thoughts/comments?

Greg

As far as I understand the whole lay off thing... Except for STL and a couple other cities, all TWA employees will merge into AA with a seniority date of April 2001. Thus, if AA is cutting jobs by seniority, the TWA folks really don't have much to stand on. I sympathize with them. But I can understand AA's side of it too. It's just a tough world we live in right now.

Yup, the seniority thing sucks.

however, whether they are getting laid off or not, does anyone have any ideas of ways to thank our favorite and v. helpful ground staff?

flying my last twa legs today http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

lala

I flew this past week and heard bad news from many Ambassador Club Employees. It appears that the options for these employees are limited. Even in STL, I heard from one of the employees that some of them will be offered long term part time jobs in security at $8/hour. At LGA, an Ambassador Club employee told me that one of the options was to move to STL, where maybe they might be given part time security jobs at a very low rate of pay.
At least there is some hope for these fine employees, as this week, they were to find out with certainty what would be happening to them.

These are some of TWA's best and brightest-I think of the skills of some of the ladies who have managed an Ambassador Club, and could have managed well a large number of people for a non-airline company. Some of them also could have managed TWA far better than many of the CEOs the airline has had. It will be a shame if these people are not offered full time jobs, but rather are forced to "retire" because of the options AA has given them.

Re: The Seniority Thing

The pilots are getting messed over as well. One of my friend here at school's father is a B757/767 First Officer with TWA. He has been with them for 11 years (military before that). He had a high seniority number for STL. Then AA closed the JFK base and dropped them into the STL pilot pool. Now his father's seniority number means nothing (all of TWA's real senior pilots were at JFK from the intl. days). When they become American pilots, his seniority number basically goes down the toilet. A partial pay decrease is happening due to this. It's also tougher for his family to use pass privileges.

It'd really be too bad if many of TWA's ground staff are "retired." They have some of the best ground agents I've come in contact with. Their flight crews (many of them are senior people) have always been excellent in my experience. My last few experiences with American have left a sour taste in my mouth. I hope the attitude level doesn't take a turn for the worst on the former TWA routes.


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Jason Seiple
JAX

As a thankyou to our outstanding ground staff in seattle. DP and I made up small gift bags (v. tasteful, v. martha) with
small chocolates, gift card from a local
department store, little globes and magnets with travel themes. She wrote some nice thank you cards too.

I hope they all get to keep their jobs or find happiness somewhere other than gate s4..

lala