chrisreedrules
Master Blaster
- I'm posting this from the "other" site. It's a brief synopsis but I think worth reposting. I believe it shows the huge disconnect from AAG management and its pilots. Doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies for the future.
Quote:
Meeting with Senior Management Synopsis
Fellow CLT Pilots;
Most of you know by now that the APA Officers and Board had a scheduled meeting with the Senior Management of American Airlines to discuss among other things the culture of the management relating to the pilots in particular. APA National has put out a Comm piece that accurately describes the event, but we wanted to give you the CLT Reps’ cliff notes version as we saw things.
First, we will address the decision to hold the meeting in closed session. While most of the BOD did want to allow the meeting to be broadcast to the membership via webcast, ultimately it was decided that it might be more productive if held in closed session. Your CLT Reps voted to hold the meeting in closed session. Our main reason was we felt that management might be more willing to speak freely and offer potential remedies if they knew it was a private conversation. As it turns out, we made a big mistake. It would have been a good opportunity to show the membership how firm, but professional, your BOD was and how flippant senior management was to our concerns.
Below are some highlights of the meeting:
President Wilson gave a short opening statement.
Six Board BOD members that represented all legacy airlines spoke at the meeting on behalf of the association. CLT lead off the presentation. (click here for a link to all presentations)
There was a very strong deliverance and feeling of unity among the legacy reps to management. In fact, one LAA Rep made a point to tell the group that LUS East & West Reps had warned them about this management and it was the consensus that we were right.
Although there were several topics such as benefits (or lack of), operations, financial (stock re-purchase, debt load, etc.), contract disparities with UAL & DAL, the main focus was on the Labor Relations Department and culture change.
Virtually every concern raised by the speakers was marginalized or denied.
Mr. Parker said that the Company has plenty of money. Relating to contract issues he went on to say, “If anyone tells you that we don’t have the money to pay for things, tell them they are not telling the truth.”
Both Mr. Parker and Mr. Isom wanted us to tell you what a great job you are doing keeping the operation running so well. In fact, later it was stated by one of the management team to one of the officers that “the pilots aren’t complaining” - as if to indicate that we are making up problems and the line pilots don’t care.
The meeting ended with Mr. Parker saying how much he enjoyed it and how he wanted to have these meetings on a monthly basis.
Three Board members, including CLT, made it clear to the management group that the meeting did not go so well. Bob’s comment was, “We may as well have been speaking Chinese.”
Management was visually taken back. They had/have no clue.
The next day it was decided to attend the Crew News at the training center to make sure there was not any revisionist history by management. There were some softball questions by a couple board members. Ron asked about the nine 330 retirements, the promise to do something about min calendar day trips, and UAL compensation. Mr. Kirby said the loss of the nine 330’s should not affect the flying and it would be replaced with other long haul aircraft. He went on to play down the UAL pay and stated that there were not a lot of trips that were affected by the min day.
When leaving the meeting, in the hallway, Bob had a chance to follow-up with Mr. Kirby and Mr. Isom about the min calendar day (or long rate rig) issue.
Bob said, “Scott, since there are not a lot of those trips, why don’t you just pay the pilots what they deserve? That is what I call a sign of culture change!”
Mr. Isom chimed in, “Because it is 40 million dollars.”
Bob reminded them that Mr. Parker said yesterday, “If anyone says we don’t have the money to pay for things, tell them they are not telling the truth.”
That stopped them for a second; then Mr. Kirby offered to trade it for 81 seat RJ’s.
Bob replied, “So you are going to make the pilots wait another four years for the long rate rig that both Delta and United now have?”
Mr. Kirby quipped, “Pilots are bidding them”. The conversation ended there.
So what’s the take-away from all this? First and foremost, if there has been any change in labor relations and culture, it is for the worse. The only explanation that we can think of for the culture getting worse is APA has put too much trust in them thinking that by showing professionalism and goodwill it will be rewarded. We must admit that even we were willing to try one more time with this meeting to “bury the hatchet”. Although the results were not what we wanted, it did demonstrate clearly to the Board that attempting to work together with management as a team is simply not going to happen.
In closing, there are huge changes coming your way in the second half of the year. Single seniority list, PBS, single FOS, and equipment shuffles to name a few. These changes are so enormous that it will take an unprecedented amount of cooperation to work through them without operational problems. The contract you now have is the contract that you will work under for the next 3 ½ years, and most likely, the next 7 or 8 with the failed RLA. Make no mistake about it, while we do make more money than before, this is a bankruptcy negotiated contract. With less money than what has recently been lost in the stock repurchase program, management could have corrected some of the more onerous parts of our contract and benefits and at the same time created tangible goodwill. “Going for Great” and “Take a leap of faith” are simply slogans that have no meaningful actions behind them. We estimate this meeting cost APA well over $100,000. Your CLT Reps have no interest in further meetings with senior management. We wish that this letter could be inspirational and uplifting in describing a watershed event with management, but that is just simply not to be.
Respectfully,
Bob and Ron,
CLT-Reps@alliedpilots.org
