AA pilots union seeks approval to advise pilots of right to refuse overtime flying
 

... in order to "mitigate pilot furloughs."

Looks like it may be a rough go in the near future if pilots are refusing overtime flying en masse.

Press Release
Source: Allied Pilots Association

Allied Pilots Association Files Complaint for Declaratory Judgment: "We Are Committed to Using Legal Methods for Mitigating Pilot Furloughs"

Friday August 1, 3:00 pm ET

FORT WORTH, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Allied Pilots Association, certified collective bargaining agent for the 12,000 pilots of American Airlines (NYSE: AMR - News), filed a complaint today in district court in Washington, D.C. for approval to advise its pilots of their right to forego voluntary overtime in order to mitigate furloughs.
The carrier’s management announced on July 15 that up to 200 pilot furloughs may commence in October. American Airlines already has 1,970 pilots on furlough.

“We are committed to using legal methods for mitigating pilot furloughs,” said APA President Captain Lloyd Hill. “Accordingly, we are seeking the court’s permission to inform our pilots of their right to forego voluntary overtime flying, which would reduce the need for any additional furloughs.”

Hill noted that the airline’s most junior pilots who would be subject to furlough were only recalled from furlough within the past several months.

“Being furloughed twice in such a short period of time, especially when it’s so easily avoidable, would be a tremendous hardship for these pilots and their families,” he said.

In APA’s court filing, the union’s attorneys emphasize that advising pilots of their right to forego voluntary overtime is a well-established past practice by APA and part of the status quo as defined by the Railway Labor Act, which governs all airline industry labor negotiations.

More here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080801/20080801005725.html?.v=1

So, after filing court papers and gaining media coverage, exactly how many pilots are left uninformed on this topic?

Wonder if they're handling it this way to work around the problem UA is having, where management filed a lawsuit and request for preliminary injunction against the pilot's union for their job actions?

Marketwatch link

I'm not sure if the APA realizes that they need AA more than AA needs them. Given all the pilot cutbacks of late, AA could tell those who refuse overtime sayonara and pick up some of the pilots recently unemployed by ATA, Midwest, and whoever else.

Not that I'm advocating such a plan...I'd much rather see the airlines and unions negotiate sustainable contracts.

That's my assumption. Better than being sued after you "remind" the membership of their right to work to rule.

Wouldn't really be "voluntary" overtime in that scenario then, would it?

That would probably lead to an instant general strike that would kill the airline. Or at least, people think it would.

Sorry, wasn't thinking...:(

But still, doesn't AA have some leverage in this situation?

If I were a pilot in this situation (and this economy), I'd be taking as much O/T as possible, just in case things get worse in a few months and I find myself without a job...

I can appreciate the frustration of all AA employees that thought in 2003 by 2008 they would have recouped their give backs. I also can understand their angrier over management bonuses paid out over the past several years while employees got measily low single digit salary increases.

But the industry has changed for the worse for all carriers, well managed and piss poor managed alike. And for now the pilots need to accept reality and just hope that AA can pull it out. What the Company as a whole really needs to be doing is become more efficient and reducing the operational defficiencies that caused this airline to turn in the worst financial performance for the most recent (2nd) quarter (exclusive of asset write downs).

The pilots should be more concerned about keeping their pensions in intact, while most Americans have seen defined pension plans go away.

AA's leverage lies in their ability to hide who is doing overtime. A lot of pilots do fly overtime and manage to pad their schedules with 100 hours instead of the normal 75-80.

Peer pressure is the best way to avoid anyone not towing the union line.

As little as two weeks ago, anyone pulling up a crew list could see how many hours a pilot had because it used to list their hours after their names. AA got in there as soon as they heard about the pilot's plan to avoid overtime and magically erased the numbers from everyone's view. There are other back door ways to find this info out, but the easiest way is gone. That alone might effectively ruin the call for pilots to fly only their hours.


What grinds my gears about the speed of removing the pilot hours from the system is that EVERYTIME AA has to do something we won as a contractual right, in terms of adding or removing something from sabre, their argument is that it costs a lost of money and takes time to do anything with Sabre. But, lo and behold, things happen lickety split when it's in their favor.:mad:

As for some of you stating how the ball is in AA's court regarding how many pilots are available who need jobs; it's not that easy. The training costs and down time would cripple us if they tried to get pilot replacement workers. The other thing is, just because someone is a pilot it doesn't mean they are a good pilot. There were so many airlines flying around for awhile there that I could have taken flying lessons and gotten a job with a commuter in no time. Many people did.

Hopefully it won't be like the teamsters and UPS, they hit overtime and the truck stops, they send another truck while that overtime driver waits, they offload everything from one truck to the other, and the new driver goes.

Imagine this process on airplanes, whoops we have a detour landing in Agra, KS on very young crop of corn for a plane change because the captain hit overtime!

As an added benefit for these troubles we are making some popped corn from the field next to us now with the jet exhaust heat, it will be passed around before takeoff, salt is only a dollar!

So it's really just a big game of prisoner's dilemma now?

The whole point is that the contract provides the right to refuse overtime. You can't fire people for exercising a contractual right; layoffs are done by seniority.

The union is trying to minimize the layoffs by convincing pilots to fly their required hours and not taking overtime. Whether it's good or bad for the company is another issue, but this seems to be something that they're within their rights to do. As someone else noted, though, persuading people not to take overtime in a difficult economic environment may be a tough sell.

Thank you for an informative post. ^

From a passenger's perspective, wouldn't you rather have a pilot who is *not* working overtime? When a 7-11 clerk works overtime and in his exhaustion accidentally undercharges for a Slurpee, who cares. When a pilot works overtime and in his exhaustion accidentally flies the wrong approach in low ceiling, thats very bad. Am I missing something? I know about FAA minimum rest requirements, but minimum rested and well rested are not the same thing.

[UPDATE: Apparently the threshold for "overtime" for American Airlines pilots is 1,000 flight hours per year. So my comments above make an assumption about overtime that may not be true with regard to pilots. Does anybody know the rule on this? Is it 1,000 hours regardless of when flown, or is it 1,000 per year, or 40 hours per week, whichever is higher, or what? I have no idea.]

Pilots are limited to 1000 hours of flying a year. Period. Most airlines guarantee 70-75 hours a month, but pilots can fly up to 83 hours a month if they so desire.

Aside from the fact that this post is absolutely hilarious, $1 seems like a steal for salt on an airplane these days.

All of them...

For those of us genuinely interested in knowing, how is it anyone's business--other than that of the employee and those responsible for payroll or regulatory requirements--how many hours a person has worked and (therefore) approximately how much that person has earned? Frankly, if my employer posted how many hours I worked or how much I earned in a system viewable by others, I'd be pretty hacked off.

Granted, I understand that this puts the union in a tough position, but my response is "too bad." Whether or not a person chooses to exercise the terms of his or her contract should be up to the person in question. APA may inform these people of their rights under the contract, but it is not the responsibility of APA or anyone else to strongarm those people into taking advantage. Given the current economic situation (price of gas, bread, electricity, and so on), if I had the opportunity for OT, I'd be sucking down every hour possible.

A legitimate gripe, but one that is separate from this discussion. To me, this demonstrates a key failing in how AA works with (or doesn't, as your perspective may dictate) its unions. There's no reason that the change had to be made under the cover of darkness, nor that any other changes requested--or required--by the union (i.e. AA's EMPLOYEES) couldn't also be implemented at the same time. However, I will extend the theory that removal of a data column is vastly easier, from a programming standpoint, to remove than the addition of a feature.

Which leads us to the fun of the last few weeks of Dec. You can practically predict when those posts are going to start.

Steve B.

LOL!!!

So now you know how we AA ffs feel about how long it takes for AA to update our elite statuses and upgrade sticker balances. Burn a sticker, and its gone immediately... but earn 4 stickers, and they take a week to post.

I'm certainly not a big fan of AA's unions in general but this one actually seems like a good move.

1. Go to court asserting your right so there's not an underground activity that AA can fight about.
2. Pilots banding together to not take overtime so they can keep junior folks flying rather than laid off. I tend to think this actually works to AA's advantage since they'll have a bigger pool of available and current pilots and can be more flexible in irreg ops.
3. The downside is that AA's benefit costs will be up with more pilots on the payroll. I suspect that will be offset if senior pilots aren't working overtime and flying is going to junior pilots.

The funny thing is that if AA management had suggested this to the union, it would have been treated as a big plot.

Of course, the real problem for pax is when they need to get a pilot to fly an extra leg at 8P from DFW because the scheduled pilot is elsewhere (sick, delayed flight etc), the pilots may be turning it down.

It's not that pilot hours are anyone's business. It is just information about hours that have been posted next to pilots names on crew lists forever. The pilots weren't the ones who asked to have it removed. It was only their hours vs. having the ability to sabre stalk someone and find out where they were at any given time.

Unlike other jobs, a union job (especially an airline one) has no secrets regarding pay scales. If you want to see what pilots make at each airline there's a web site you can visit and punch the hours in/airplane and seat/and airline and you'll see it. Same holds true for FA's. If you had access to a pilot bid sheet they also list what they will make for the month at the bottom of each selection. What they make has only become an issue because management made it one by claiming they make too much for what they do so they could turn the public against them.

Pilots are trying to get money back in their contracts so they can work what they do now and not work one more trip a month in order to get that money back. If pilots continue to heed the call of more productivity they will never get a raise and they will wind up working more hours per month.

BTW, it's not strictly a desire to be lazy or mess with the company either. MOST pilots are genuinely worried about any rise in pilot maximum hours because they are worried about fatigue issues and having responsibility for the lives of their passengers on their hands. There are fatigue issues now that worry them due to constant ATC holds, storms, and significant delays.

I'm not for raising pilot maximum hours. I see what that has done to the FA work force and I wouldn't want to see that kind of fatigue in my pilot. We've had an AA bean counter and a computer decide what kind of schedules can be handled by a human and I can attest that it just isn't working for us so I definitely don't want the pilots flying me around dealing with the same scenarios.