What has the Union done for you lately?

This article describes the lobbying expenses the IBT incurred during the fourth quarter of last year. I urge you to read the third paragraph in particular as it relates to aircraft maintenance. Are you a member of D.R.I.V.E.? If you would like to contribute to the lobbying effort, it's easy to sign up. See Tom or myself for the forms.

Latest UAL update for Flight Attendants

For those that don't follow UAL's negotiation update site the following is the update from 3-23-10. My thanks to Kevin Giegoldt from Chicago for pointing this out. Of particular note is the Company's repeated offer to throw out the Agreement and use the CAL's FA Agreement as a template. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure appears that we are headed for a merger;

Most Recent Update: March 23, 2010


The United and AFA Negotiating Committees met in Chicago with mediator John Livingood on March 16-18. The agenda was Sec. 2 (Definitions), miscellaneous letters of agreement at the end of Sec. 35, a review of AFA’s pay proposal in Sec. 5 (Compensation), preferencing for reserve move-up lines, reduction in personnel processes, and uniforms. A handful of small issues were resolved in Sec. 2 and in the Sec. 35 letters of agreement, but overall progress was negligible.

United management and AFA extensively discussed their ideas regarding preferencing for reserve move-up lines, reduction in force issues, and uniforms. While nothing was firmly resolved, there is a reasonable chance of progress in these three areas when the parties meet again on April 20-22 in Chicago. Also on the agenda will be preferencing for reserve assignments, critical coverage, the attendance point system, and miscellaneous open issues in Section 4 (General). The mediator also instructed the parties to begin the process of prioritizing their bargaining objectives, and articulating the rationale of their priorities.


On March 18, United management repeated their invitation to use Continental’s Flight Attendant contract as a model for our negotiations. This would result in significant pay and per diem increases for United Flight Attendants, and would also yield work rule productivity improvements and savings in the area of Benefit costs. AFA negotiators continue to reject this approach -- as they have for months.

The Company continues to meet with every union other than AFA outside of dates where the mediator is available, based on continued negotiating progress and a willingness of the other unions to engage in meaningful negotiations. United has advised that it will meet with AFA outside of mediation when there is likelihood of progress during discussions, and a willingness of the AFA Negotiating Committee to conduct actual negotiations.

Continental employee testifies at Concorde trial

The title says it all. Here is a link to the article. Be careful out there.

HCR floor debate

I am watching the HCR (health care reform) debate on CSPAN. It appears the bill will pass but we'll have to wait for another hour or so before that happens, obviously depending on Minority Leader Boehner's decision as to whether he will read the entire bill or not. Because of this, the weekly report may be delayed till much later this evening.

Joint Board

The Board is convening for one day tomorrow in Chicago. I've finished preparing the grievance involving seniority application from IAD to be presented tomorrow and it is my opinion that the Union has a strong case. I am hopeful that we will prevail in this matter.

One of the cases submitted to the Board regarding the issuance of discipline, was settled this week and has therefore been withdrawn. We still have five cases submitted to the Board for review and absent resolution locally, they should be heard soon.

 

Weekly report 3-9-10

General Information

I stopped by the AFA office on Monday, and the AFA has invited us to participate in an informational picketing regarding outsourcing. This event is being put together by both ALPA and the AFA to protest the Company's deal with Aer Lingus, and they are requesting the participation of all Unions on the property. The picketing will be on March 28^th from 2 to 4pm. With both the pilot and flight attendant groups participating, there is sure to be wide coverage from the media. We've been affected by outsourcing more than any group at the Company, and this would be a good opportunity to express our concerns to the news crews that are present. This brings to mind the Chinese proverb; the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The latest negotiation update can be found by following the link at the top of the page.

There will be two Joint Board sessions this month as we were unable to schedule one in February. I will be leaving tomorrow for the session in San Francisco. The next session will be next week in Chicago. I am hopeful that we can resolve several of our outstanding third steps prior to, or during the Chicago session.

MM

The Company has expressed a willingness to negotiate a formalized set of local overtime rules. The Company wants to institute some form of sign up list, and it is my desire to achieve clarity and transparency. I say this because the Company follows some of the previous rules but not others and this creates confusion. A couple of members that came down from New York had a great idea regarding transparency by providing access to call sheets, and it is my goal to include their idea in the rules. The previous rules can be found here.

GQ

There has been no grievance activity in the shop lately.

PV

There are a few grievances that I am working on with Brandon and I'll keep you posted as to their disposition.

That's all for now,

Bob

Another merger article

Here is another article regarding potential airline mergers. This article is from the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation and the author indicates their view that United will merge with US Airways. The big reason stated for the benefits of this combination is that US Airways offers an east coast presence that United doesn't currently enjoy. In addition, the author indicates this merger paves the way for continued domestic capacity reduction that is still needed for airlines to avoid future bankruptcies. Also the author indicates that United will need help from its Unions to achieve profitability through the down cycles. As the author correctly indicates, this will be "hard and risky". I would say "hard and risky" is the biggest understatement of the year given what has already been conceded during the bankruptcy restructuring.

Merger mania

With all the recent articles regarding rumors of mergers, (Article 2), (Article 3), I thought it would be a good idea to sift through them so we can speculate where we may be headed over the next several months. Obviously there are only two serious contenders so this post will deal only with the possibility of a merger with either Continental or US Airways.

Which merger makes the most sense? In my opinion, if we must merge, a Continental tie-up would be the optimal choice. There are a few factors that lead me to this conclusion, not the least of which is the fact that Continental is a much more stable enterprise. For us, I believe the most important aspect of any merger would be the impact on Labor. According to this piece from 2006, Labor can make some monetary gains when mergers are proposed, but outside of that, the previous wave of consolidation was very difficult on employees. The point of the previous article was a review of overlaps between the big six airlines and which of those the author felt would pass DOJ scrutiny. The author's prediction that a Delta Northwest combination would pass turned out to be correct. Neither of the possible current merger candidates presents an overlap in hubs that would lead to an immediate consolidation of hubs involving employee reductions at any of our current points, with the exception of Washington DC in a merger with US Airways. Of course there could be reductions in some hub flying with either combination as a way for a merged carrier to reduce costs. With that said, it seems the President of ALPA, Capt. John Prater, has weighed in on which merger he supports. While Capt. Prater would support a merger with CAL, a merger with US Airways would provide for an election once single carrier status was granted, and ALPA could regain its lost membership from US Airways. The combination that would result in the fewest union elections would be the one with CAL. For that merger the Flight Attendants, Ramp, and Customer Service Agents would all be in a position of possible certification elections while the Pilots and Mechanics would not. In a merger with US Airways every group would potentially face elections.

In one of the articles in the opening paragraph, two airlines have stated they are open to mergers. Of course those two are United and US Airways, and the rumors of this tie-up were addressed in a previous blog post. So what about Continental? The rumors surrounding Continental's involvement are more subdued. Here is an article where Glenn Tilton hints that he is still interested in CAL, and here is an article where Jeff Smisek says CAL's not interested at this time but would be open to it if the DAL/NWA merger becomes a profitable enterprise. This is in line with the speculation of the 2006 article where the author felt that a successful merger amongst any of the big six would trigger a wave of consolidation similar to what happened in 1985.

So what does all this tell us about the future of our industry? It seems certain that consolidation will happen, and it is my feeling that it will occur soon. The question that remains open is which partner United chooses. It looks like we are in for an interesting couple of months in the industry.

EDIT: Found this today while surfing the stock message boards. It is the authors opinion that the stock could be headed higher based on the market assumption of a merger with CAL and the market cap that would produce. It's an interesting read.

EDIT: Here is an article posted on the Denver Blog today regarding the conventional wisdom of a UAL/CAL merger and the reasons why the author thinks this is inevitable