A quick summary of major and noteworthy events since the start of negotiations.
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July 7, 2010
American and the Transport Workers Union have finalized the language for the Maintenance Control Technician (Technical Specialist) tentative agreement,
as well as a question & answer document related to the TA reached.
To view the full-text language, click here.
To view the Retiree Medical question & answer document, click here.
May 7, 2010
American Airlines and the Transport Workers Union have reached a tentative agreement in principle for the Maintenance Control Technician workgroup, previously known as the Technical Specialist workgroup. Agreement has now been reached on all contracts related to our maintenance organization. This is the third tentative agreement reached this week.
Similar to the other two tentative agreements reached earlier this week with the Mechanic & Related and Material Logistics Specialist workgroups, this tentative agreement provides our Maintenance Control Technicians with market-based compensation, including structural increases, and enhancements to other contract items such as vacation, holidays and sick leave. It also provides American with improved efficiency in the field work assignments this workgroup oversees.
Both parties worked collaboratively during this negotiating process to reach a tentative agreement that addresses the interests of our TWU-represented employees and the company.
It is our understanding that the TWU negotiating committee is recommending that this tentative agreement goes to the membership for consideration and ratification. The union will provide details regarding its terms and the voting process to its members in the coming days.
American Airlines has more than 50,000 employees represented by unions, including approximately 90 under this tentative agreement.
April 14, 2010
American is pleased the National Mediation Board has called for the parties to reconvene, while it continues to consider the requests from the union and the company. American's negotiating teams remain focused and are ready to get back to work at the table once the NMB sets dates to reconvene the parties.
February 22-25, 2010
This week the American Airlines and Transport Workers Union Technical Specialist negotiating committees continued negotiations in Tulsa, Okla. with Mediator Jack Kane.
On Wednesday, American provided the TWU a full-text comprehensive proposal. The company’s proposal aimed to address the current state of both the airline and the industry while also addressing many of the union’s interests.
While the company modified its previous proposal in areas such as sick leave and vacation, it did so in order to provide improvements elsewhere in the proposal, like the additional lump sums and the option to convert lump sums to structural increases to maintain American’s relative standing. It is not unusual during collective bargaining, especially when using the comprehensive proposal approach, to have specific areas change from proposal to proposal. These changes were aimed at recognizing the desires of our TWU-represented employees while also allowing American to better manage its labor unit cost and be competitive.
We look forward to continuing negotiations with the TWU at a later date to be determined and scheduled by Mediator Kane.
American’s comprehensive proposal includes:
- Hours of Work: Propose a 6 day on/3 day off work schedule with an 8.3 hour day. This outcome would result in Tech Specialist employees working fewer hours (approximately 66 hours) on an annual basis with no adverse impact to annual pay.
- Compensation:
- Adjust the current hourly rates based on the proposed 6/3 8.3 hour day work schedule. Example: Max chart rate adjusted from $31.09 to $32.11/hour.
- Provide lump sums each of the four years of the contract for an aggregate of 10 percent over the four years, beginning date of signing.
- A full-time Tech Specialist at max rate would get approximately $7,684 in lumps sums throughout the life of the agreement, with the potential for up to 7 percent to be convertible to structural increases.
- The lump sums are convertible in whole or in part to structural increases to keep American’s relative standing compared to US and UA for the maximum hourly rate. US Airways and United are used as comparators since the Tech Specialists at those carriers are unionized and covered by labor agreements. At other carriers, these positions are worked by management.
- Shift Differential & Test Hop: Increase Test Hop insurance from $100,000 to $150,000.
- Field Work: Increase the compensated time for Field Trips to 60 minutes prior to flight departure, instead of the current 30 minutes. Allow Tech Specialists to work on multiple aircraft while at a station for field work to improve efficiency.
- Holidays: Increase total number of holidays from five to eight by the second year of the contract. Increase holiday work rate of pay from one and a half times to double time on date of signing.
- Vacation: Increase the accrual rate for employees with less than five years to 80 hours of vacation a year, or two weeks. This will give all employees with less than ten years the ability to accrue up to 80 hours, or two weeks.
- Sick Leave: Modify the accrual rate to increase to eight days per year during the life of the agreement.
- Retirement Benefits: Provide a defined contribution 401(k) plan for new hires, better aligning American with what is standard in the industry. Only one AA competitor currently offers a defined benefit plan while others have terminated or frozen their plans. New hires would be automatically enrolled in the $uper $aver Plus 401(k) plan to include a 100 percent company match for employee contributions up to 5.5 percent. Existing employees would have the option of moving to the defined contribution 401(k) plan or staying in the current defined benefit pension plan.
- Retiree Medical: American’s proposal guarantees access to retiree medical coverage, regardless of employee health status – both before and after age 65 – but modifies the funding of those programs to better align American with the industry and corporate America.
- Current Retirees – Make no changes to plans for current retirees. The changes outlined below would begin for retirements on or after 1/1/2011.
- Current employees will have pre-funding balances refunded and company pre-funding contributions will stop at date of signing.
- Current Employee Pre-65 – Retirees will make monthly retiree medical payments to cover a portion of the cost. The company's proposal is that employees will pay the same portion of costs that management pays, which today is 25 percent but could change over time. Today American retirees who are making monthly payments for pre-65 coverage pay between $110 and $140 per month per person.
- Current Employee Post-65 – At age 65, retirees will receive access to a series of Medicare supplement plans offered by UnitedHealthcare. The plans will be "guaranteed issue" meaning any employee will be eligible, regardless of medical history or condition. The employee will pay 100 percent of the premiums for the Medicare supplement coverage. For 2010, the national average monthly payment for Medicare supplement coverage ranges from $81 to $183 per person depending on the plan and coverage level selected.
- Terms of Retiree Medical will be as good as or better than the retiree medical plan design, eligibility and contributions offered to management.
- New Hires – Pre-65 retirees will have access to retiree medical coverage with no company subsidy. The new hire will pay the full contribution. Post-65 retiree coverage will be replaced by a guaranteed issue, employee paid Medicare supplement plan.
- Profit Sharing: Replace the current financial component of the AIP plan with an uncapped annual profit sharing plan rewarding employees at the first dollar earned and matches what was the richest plan in the industry.
- Eagle ASM Cap: The current Eagle ASM Letter restricts American’s ability to compete with other legacy carriers and their regional partners because of the number of American Eagle/American Connection available seat miles (ASMs) American can fly relative to the American Airlines ASMs across the network.
American would like to have the flexibility to increase its number of regional ASMs to optimize our network. The company proposes modifying the cap to not exceed the industry average (based on CO, DL, UA and US with their regional partners), which currently stands at 21.3%.
To view the company's comprehensive proposal, click here.
