(Pacific Business News posted the following article by Howard Dicus on its website on April 11.)
HONOLULU — The Transport Workers Union, representing ground workers at American Airlines, has resumed online and telephone balloting on the concessionary tentative contract agreement that the airline wants by Monday.
The union said it resumed balloting Thursday night, around 10:00 p.m. in Ft. Worth, Texas, where American Airlines is headquartered. That was 5:00 p.m. in Honolulu.
Balloting was interrupted the day before when labor and management surprised each other and themselves by discovering they were not precisely on the same page about what they had agreed to.
“We stopped all electronic and telephonic balloting on the proposed contractual relief,” said James Little, director of TWU’s Air Transport Division, “because, after several days of effort, there were still significant disputes over language between the union and the company, and we simply will not force our members to vote on a contract under circumstances where they cannot examine all changes in language.”
Little revealed in a message to his members that there is still a lot of rank-and-file sentiment against the concessions, especially after reviewing details of concessions that ground workers belonging to another union have agreed to at United Airlines.
“Many of our members have called to point out aspects of this agreement, which they believe are better than what we have presented,” Little said.
He said the two contracts do contain different concession formulas but added that he felt the TWU package at American “is more than equivalent” in the value of what has been retained for workers.
American employees belonging to the Transport Workers Union, Allied Pilots Association and Association of Professional Flight Attendants have until Monday to accept contract concessions or AMR Corp. vows to file for Chapter 11.
The company has bankruptcy cash lined up already, so it will continue to fly if this happens. But the prospective debtor-in-possession lenders, who have the power to set conditions for their loans, have said they will insist on $500 million in annual labor costs beyond the ones being voted on now.
In receivership, the true chief executive of a company is a bankruptcy court judge, who is charged by law with looking out for the interest of creditors, especially secured creditors, and the judge has the legal power to set aside union contracts and simply order wages cuts and work rules changed.
American CEO Don Carty told employees at a meeting in Ft. Worth on Thursday that business is down so much since the war in Iraq began that the company may have to file for bankruptcy even if it gets the concessions it’s seeking, but flatly said that rejection of the concessions will mean an immediate filing and additional layoffs.