American Airlines Flight Attendants "Narrowly Reject" Concessions - AMR Headed For Bankruptcy

Fox News Channel ^ | April 15, 2003 | N/A

[Illbay]

Could be a long summer for airline travel!

[DennisR]

I believe that if the airline industry fails, we will see major, major, major recession--if not depression--in this country and maybe internationally. This industry is so critical to business that without it there will be significant disruptions in the supply chain that may never be overcome. I believe Boeing is the biggest exporter in this country. Without those particular exports, our balance of trade goes absolutely bonkers. At that point, you might want to start stuffing cash into your mattress...

[cherry]

while I detest most unions, someday even here on FR people will become aware that there is a tremendous drain from our working and middle classes which will sometime catch up with the "rich" and the "near rich"...

we have had a unbelievable amount of corporate greed, swindling, stealing, and company-killing antics, all to fill the pockets of the few, leaving the American middle-class poorer and poorer...

I think FA's are useless and undeserving of much of a salary, however, someone has got to stop big corporations from making "we the people" the sacrificial lambs for their largese....

[185JHP]

It's sometimes a real good solution to the greed of the "corporats." It doesn't always work, but it works more often than the greedsters would like. Ask UPS, that exploited its workers by having them work 7 hour days, 35 hour weeks, and denying them full-time wages and benefits.

[Maynerd]

I sure hope AA can be saved from the brink. My father is retired career AA man and I have watched with apprehension as the majors fall like dominos (Delta is bound to be whacked as well). It's a damn shame this fine airline is in such dire circumstances. Best of luck.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Somewhere over the rainbow...

[ISawIt]

As usual, the Union higher-ups are attempting to loot a
corpse.

Get a bone here, a shrivelled sinew there...

The fact of the matter is that if you're a leech, and
the patient was dying from starvation to begin with,
you better detach and find a plumper host.
You sucked all the juice out of this one.

[Rome2000]

My sympathies to the pilots who voted a paycut only to see their entire business threatened by a union of airborne waitresses.

I bet it was the gay male flight attendants that pushed the vote against the cuts over the top.

Bunch of militant little sissies.

[LaineyDee]

Somewhere over the rainbow...

Ha! Good one!

[Capt.YankeeMike]

besides liberals, are there any more stupid people in this country than union employees? Union here in Indy just killed United maintenance hub, 1200 employess let go for good, geez dont these people read the news? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot....idiots.

[discostu]

In the short term unions can solve problems. But organizations will never cease to exist so unions (and ADLs, and PACs, this isn't a unique problem) won't go away just because they've accomplished the goal, they need new goals, they manufacture new "problems" to "solve", and eventually you have the union telling the owners how much money they're allowed to spend on advertising (reference - MLB Players Association most recent negotions with the MLB). At that point (actually well before that point) the union becomes a problem in it's own right and will eventually destroy the business and possibly the industry.

[archy]

When I started, the unions were starting to be a problem, but the employees keep voting them out. Unfortunately they keep trying and the company went bankrupt and the president killed himself.

Sounds like Express Air One. Their president came from a previous airline whose upper management had been under federal investigation, then turned state's evidence against his partner, some of whom did serious prison time and I believe a suicide or convenient death or two was involved as well. You are invited to guess whom the source of the original corrupt practices was, and who likely tipped off the feds as well....and well as to how the current airline he runs is managed.

The current operation is so far as I know, the only airline to have had an alleged stowaway/attempted hijacker ejected from a passenger airliner in flight.

-archy-/-

[Puddleglum]

A friend of mine is a flight attendant for AA. This person said that there are 51 Vice Presidents of AA. There used to be 18. These middle managers are well paid but refuse to take pay cuts. This was a sticking point for the negotiations, one of them, so I'm told.

If this is true, it's a good reason for the flight attendants to be sore. Share the misery is fine by me, but only if it's the same percentage across the board.

PS - I think AA has been running on razor-thin profit margins to try to squeeze the competition out. I think a lot of small airlines will spring up to fill in the niche markets and AA will reemerge serving the bigger markets it can profitably manage.

[archy]

Beck isright accused the airline CEOs of United and AMR of manslaughter. Go up the thread; you'll find it.

I won't speak about United not having worked for them or at or around a Untied hub. But I can tell you that many employees of AMR would agree with him in light of the Halloween 1994 crash of American Eagle flight 4184 [ATR-72-210 turboprop] near Roselawn Indiana that killed all four crewmembers and 64 passengers aboard. And most also figure the FAA [.pdf] and the aircraft's French manufacturer are at least equally criminally responsible, if not moreso.

[Mister Magoo]

Here's what everyone must realize -- AMR will file regardless of these labor concessions. That's when it will really hit the fan.

[archy]

In other news, Southwest and Sky Blue triple in size overnight. I guess the union hasn't been reading the papers lately.

Either that, or they read the part in the papers about how Southwest's mechanics, formerly represented by the Teamsters, voted to boot them out in favour of the AMFA, a new union that would negotiate more aggressively for a better contract.

Interestingly, the Flight Attendants for Northwest's commuter hub feeder Express Air 1/Pinochle airways voted in a union for themselves a couple of years back: the paper workers union, of all things.

-archy-/-

[1Old Pro]

Could be a long summer for airline travel!

The airlines that don't have unions standing on their necks will meet the demand.

Unions are bankrupting our cities, our manufacturing base, our airlines, and ESPECIALLY our tazpayers who are held hostage to high school taxes and high public payrolls.

[Don Corleone]

I think FA's are useless and undeserving of much of a salary

And you will continue to think so until the day one gives up her life to save yours on a burning airplane. Of course you never think that will happen do you?

[not-alone]

no Mohawk
, Tha airline was started when Bob Peach was a student at Cornell and was a great Amarican sucess story for awhile,Link of the Link simulators was also involved with the company and very good friend of Peach.

[Illbay]

I can't think of a single airline that isn't unionized.

Can you?

[tm22721]

Unions are bankrupting our cities, our manufacturing base, our airlines, and ESPECIALLY our tazpayers

Sour grapes.

As long as there are MBA managers, there will be unions.

BUMP