I think a history lesson is in order here.

To understand the deep mistrust that labor has for management, one needs to go back to the early 1980s when Bob Crandall came up with the concept of B-scales. B-scales allowed existing employees to keep earning at their higher A-scales, while new employees received lower compensation. Simply enough, B-scales were a divisive tool designed to lower labor costs through growth.

The concept itself was genius and Crandall was able to engineer AA's rapid post-deregulation growth on the back of B-scales. Unfortunately, for B-scales to continue to be effective the balance of influence within the labor pool must always be in favor of the A-scales personnel, simply because they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. That means that B-scale personnel need to transition to A-scales at some point as either the B-scale group grows disproportionately large, or the A-scale group shrinks as a result of natural attrition. Once the influence within the overall labor pool shifts to the B-scale personnel, acceptance of the principle will automatically collapse.

This is where American's management went wrong. Caught up in the rapid overexpansion of the 1980s, Crandall lost sight of the equilibrium point until it was too late. A labor confrontation was averted in 1987 as an agreement was reached to phase out B-scales, but that was never fully implemented despite agreement in principle and in contract, mainly due to the industry downturn during that period.

Matters came to a head in 1993 when the contract came up for renewal. Bob Crandall unfortunately allowed his personal dislike for Denise Hedges (the APFA leader) and his anti-gay personal opinions to guide his professional actions. The negotation process was characterized by bad faith between the parties, going as far as APFA's filing in Federal Court accusing AMR of the same. AMR, for its part, refused to bargain and instead sought to unilaterally impose contract changes.

Matters reached a head when AMR threatened to proactively hire non-union replacement workers if APFA did not agree to their proposed unilateral changes. Finally, the union voted to authorize a strike in November of 1993.

American Airlines' response to this was absolutely brutal and sent labor relations back to the stone age. The airline had counted on this response to force sufficient folks to cross the picket lines and enable continued operations. This miscalculation proved fatal for AMR as over 90% of the workers stayed away despite only 71% initially authorizing the strike.

Finally, President Clinton ordered the strikers to return and things returned to almost normal at APFA. Crandall's actions during the strike sealed the end of his distinguished career at American and brought Don Carty to the forefront as the successor. Nonetheless, the scars of the three contract disputes remained, and when American dragged its feet for over 3 years before negotiating a new contract in 2001, APFA was understandably bummed.

Now, after taking 3 years to GIVE, American seeks an immediate return plus more. Despite labor's willingness to discuss this for the last many months, AMR chose not to reach a bilateral decision but instead to essentially unilaterally dictate these changes on the union at short notice.