April 4, 2019
American, AGAIN, Shows Their Corporate Greed
Brothers and Sisters,
The Association leadership met with American Airlines executive management Wednesday, April 3rd in Washington, DC. The idea was to have an unfiltered discussion with company decision makers to, hopefully, break the logjam in negotiations.
The lower level company negotiators had reached the end of their authority and steadfastly continued their concessionary demands that the Association give up healthcare options that already exist, accept inferior retirement provisions and allow our work to be outsourced. Your negotiators refuse to accept these concessionary demands.
The higher level executives doubled down at the meeting by reinforcing all of the company concessionary demands. They unflinchingly argued that their proposals should be good enough for the Association workforce to accept. They glowed about the future rosy outlook for the company while simultaneously stating that the workforce should shrink and be happy about it.
Consider this: over a 5-year period, American Airlines has authorized that $15 billion of company money be spent to buy back company stock. The cost of our contracts, with all of our proposals including work protections, would only be a fraction of that money. The leadership of this company is clearly driven by greed over consideration of the long term survival of its workforce.
Sisters and Brothers, we are in the fight of our careers. The executive leadership of this company has made it perfectly clear that they will not play fair.
The choice for every Association represented member is to either lay down and accept this or clearly and unambiguously let the company know you refuse. Your Association leadership has already let them know we are in for the fight.
The rest is up to you.
Fraternally,
Your Association Negotiating Committees
