ehallison

I searched the forum for this, and found an older thread that had been locked because it turned into an argument for/against unionization in general. So I hope it's OK to post this here, which I just saw on Bloomberg:
AMR May Face Attendant Strike Vote as Talks Near End

It says no strike is planned, but that they don't believe an agreement will be reached before talks end tomorrow night.

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mvoight

Where do they anticipate any extraa money will come from? The airline is losing a lot of money.

Doghound

That's why the last paragraph of the article says
I don't know what the FAs are thinking.

brp

Probably the same thing that the ones at BA (already among the highest paid based on what I read) were thinking.

Cheers.

execplatscum

Not like they can just raise checked baggage fees on a whim

zman

But they have excess $ to allocate free stock to the executives.
I am sure they would take the same stock grants as a % of salary the management team gets.

brp

This stock was already allocated as part of the compensation package for the executives. It's not as if they're just handing out a bunch of free stock for the hell of it. Understanding how executive compensation works really helps here (and I'm not talking about the abuses after-the-fact by the banks and such; that's quite different.)

Cheers.

aamilesslave

Perhaps AA should violate the executives' contracts by refusing to award this compensation. And while they're at it, they should refuse to pay pilots and FAs some of the compensation in their contracts.

skylady

deleted

Ready2Go

Probably that in this environment, those who fail to stick up for themselves in negotiations are lost.

There's no indication at this point that they're being foolhardy or spiteful; in fact they have openly supported the ATI application, which is one of the more important variables in AA's future.

fahrradman

AA has the highest labor costs because they have the best employees in the industry (legacy carrier division). I could fly UA but don't because:

1) AA employees are almost always nice to me, especially the FAs. UA employees snarl at me.
2) FF program for top tier elites is second to none.

I've been more loyal to AA than I have been to significant others over the years. Don't go messing with what works or I may develop airline monogomy issues.

lexington

AA management would look a lot more credible crying "I'm broke" if they had not very publicly offered to come up with $1 billion to rescue JAL.

I_Claudius

I may be mistaken, but isn't the issue that the FAs are currently working without a contract?

Doghound

I thought a part of the money they "offered" JAL was guaranteed revenue that they see already? Therefore, AA was actually offering up a lot less. Not to mention that a 3rd party, not AMR, was ponying up a lot of the cash to keep JAL around. Therefore, AA really doesn't have $1b in available cash.

FWAAA

Not exactly. Under the Railway Labor Act (airlines are not covered by the NLRA), contracts never expire; they become "amendable" every so often (the term is agreed by the parties). The APFA (AA flight attendant union) contract became amendable about 20 months ago (May, 2008). Recently, the WN pilots ratified a new agreement that had become amendable in September, 2006, so long negotiations are not uncommon in the industry.

Your post would be more credible if you'd not mischaracterized the size of AA's offer by more than a factor of three. AA has offered up to about $300 million in investment and has arranged for TPG to invest up to $1.1 billion:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1835...=yahoo&page=-1 (Tom Horton of AMR)

AA's proposed investment of about $300 million in JAL would be a one-time investment designed with the hope of preserving the relationship and the substantial revenue that relationship generates. AA's employee unions are currently demanding raises that total billions of dollars a year in on-going expenses. I'm confident you can see the fundamental difference between the two.