{"id":15448,"date":"2012-08-10T12:52:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T16:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=15448"},"modified":"2012-08-10T13:04:55","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T17:04:55","slug":"aas-labor-union-antics-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/15448\/aas-labor-union-antics-continue\/","title":{"rendered":"American Airlines&#8217; Labor Union Antics Continue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In yet another example of big labor flexing its destructive\u00a0muscle\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14109\/big-labor-attempts-to-commandeer-american-airlines\/\" target=\"_blank\">to undercut<\/a>\u00a0American Airlines&#8217; bankruptcy restructuring, the Allied Pilots Association this week rejected\u00a0a\u00a0contract offer from\u00a0American that included pay raises and a 13.5 percent stake in the company, among other generous terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, afterwards, the union board forced\u00a0its president David Bates \u2013 who\u00a0has a reputation for being\u00a0both reasonable and pragmatic \u2013 to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.star-telegram.com\/sky_talk\/2012\/08\/pilots-union-president-resigns-after-members-reject-american-contract.html\" target=\"_blank\">resign<\/a> as seemingly a sole\u00a0consequence of his support for American\u2019s offer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s now beyond clear that the pilots union\u00a0is going\u00a0all in with US Airways CEO Doug Parker, who has made numerous promises to labor in his recent attempts to prematurely force a merger with American.\u00a0This is the same CEO Parker who,\u00a0since uniting America West with US Airways seven years ago,\u00a0 has been unable to settle terms\u00a0with the pilots of those airlines, even while he is now actively negotiating with American&#8217;s pilots.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The fact remains that the entire airline industry was bloated during the last decade, and every legacy carrier has been forced to restructure to reduce their costs. While American \u2013 whose\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/magazine\/content\/10_42\/b4199019823300.htm\" target=\"_blank\">onerous labor costs<\/a>\u00a0are the highest in the industry\u00a0\u2013 waited the longest to restructure, the company has recently excelled financially. To sustain\u00a0its recent\u00a0performance, however,\u00a0there is no getting around the fact that it will need\u00a0\u00a0to continue to cut costs, which means labor will have to agree to reasonable concessions.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, a number of other unions have been more agreeable in their negotiations with American: mechanics and aircraft stock clerks represented by\u00a0 the Transport Workers Union both ratified new accords this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But if American\u2019s pilots are unable to cooperate with their own labor leadership, colleagues and management to accept generous but realistic contract terms, they\u00a0could effectively send their employer, or perhaps the entire airline industry, the way of the auto industry.<\/p>\n<p>The difference\u00a0this time being, the taxpayers won\u2019t be there to bail them out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In yet another example of big labor flexing its destructive\u00a0muscle\u00a0to undercut\u00a0American Airlines&#8217; bankruptcy restructuring, the Allied Pilots Association this week rejected\u00a0a\u00a0contract offer from\u00a0American that included pay raises and a 13.5 percent stake in the company, among other generous terms.\u00a0 To make matters worse, afterwards, the union board forced\u00a0its president David Bates \u2013 who\u00a0has a reputation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3754,3524,974],"class_list":["post-15448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-allied-pilots-association","tag-american-airlines","tag-labor-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15448"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15457,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15448\/revisions\/15457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}