American Airlines pilots have voted to authorize a strike. This came after the airline’s CEO announced that they’re ready to pay pilots up to $590,000 per year, essentially matching Delta’s new pay rates and improving on scheduling and other quality of life issues.
While the pilot union would like you to believe this is more than it is, it’s effectively business as usual. They’re in negotiations and want to ‘keep the pressure on’ so the logical step is a strike threat.
- Unions want a strike authorization vote to make threats of a strike credible. Meanwhile they tell members that the strike authorization vote gets them the contract they want meaning it makes a strike unnecessary. Many members will vote to authorize a strike without wanting to strike, and they’re told voting to strike doesn’t mean striking – it’s a way to get what they want without doing so.
- At the same time a strike vote makes an actual strike more likely. It’s one step towards a strike, and it hands power to union leadership and gives them the choice (once the National Mediation Board releases them to do so).
Meanwhile the spokesman for American Airlines pilots makes the rather odd claim that threatening to strike is really doing something to help the company and passengers. They just want to pressure American Airlines management to fix the operation!
.@AlliedPilots @DennisTajer to @NewsNation this morning on @AmericanAir management, a potential strike and summer readiness. "We've got to pull them [management] into the light, so that our passengers are served this summer reliably." pic.twitter.com/bnZDOt9VPh
— Ross Feinstein (@RossFeinstein) May 1, 2023
This is a bizarre take for two reasons. First, the strike threat is a negotiations tool. They have commitments on money but are still negotiating over ‘quality of life issues’ like limits on trip construction (how much American can make pilots work, and how long trips can be etc.). Second, striking would not actually… serve passengers better.
A strike authorization doesn’t mean a strike, and it’s not the only way a pilots group can slow down an airline. Pilots can work to rule. They take longer, double and triple checking everything ‘for safety’ and out of ‘an abundance of caution’ to slow down the operation. They find issues that aren’t safety problems, that they’d normally fly with, and reject an aircraft. They get paid to foil the airline operationally.
American and United both are facing disgruntled pilots, more so after Delta backed up the truck to give their pilot union a rich contract. But neither can afford it as much as Delta can. American Airlines is deeply in debt and higher pilot costs are already going to weigh on their profitability and ability to generate free cash to pay down bonds. Either a work action, or costs even higher than the airline has factored, ultimately benefit Delta because they weaken American. Paying their pilots more may have been a brilliant move for Delta.
Yeah, the pilots are “concerned” for the passengers. Give me a break…
Part of me wishes AA would just go out of business and put all of these whiny babies on the street..
You wrote:
A strike authorization doesn’t mean a strike, and it’s not the only way a pilots group can slow down an airline. Pilots can work to rule. They take longer, double and triple . . .
You contradict yourself when you say that authorizing a strike does NOT help customers. Then you provide a way of truly hurting customers and also the airline. In order to feel and understand the motives of the union leadership, only a union member get the real idea of what’s going down.
Union members are not at the mercy of leadership. They guide the desires of the members to obtain what the want most. Often it is not just the money. Big corps are willing to pay extra to inconvenience the worker and sometimes it isn’t enough to get a contract done.
A match made in heaven……greedy pilots and clueless management. Can’t wait until
ALPA gets in the middle of this as they lick their financial chops trying to get the AA gang to “come back to the master.”
These overpaid and freeloading cockpit crybabies, need to be dispatched to GITMO to do hard labor. Flying-by-wire has made their jobs redundant and through the miracles of AI, I hope that these whiny morons are made redundant and shown their way out into the wilderness.
AFairTexan,
Good luck with that…. It’s the current market rate, just like the old market rate was peanuts but I’m sure your rant would be the same.
I support people joining a union and I support their right to strike. Of course, that also means I support the right of the employer to fire every last one of them if they choose. What’s fair is fair, right?
Go ahead and strike.
This will take pressure off the north east ATC volume mandates. B6 will gladly handle AA PAX via the NEA. DL might get a spare gate at DCA. Folks will stand in the aisles of Amtrak Northeastern service. The OneWorld alliance airlines at JFK will express their luv for the lack of interconnection. Folks may develop a rose colored memory of the Southwest meltdown of last year to assure transportation thru Chicago and Dallas and LAX.
LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!!
outstanding.
A strike threat is the only leverage unionized labor has in the airline industry. Any one of the people that talks about the selfishness of pilots etc should first post their pay rate progression over the past 7 years and let us know what they had to do to get to that point.
I absolutely support the unions not just at American but also Southwest and United that have amendable labor contracts that have not been settled to make their voices known the management, seek mediation under the terms of the RLA and to informationally picket to passengers and major customers.
Plan a road trip for your summer vacation this year. Allow yourself a week or two in each direction and plan a budget for high gas prices. No stress worrying about TSA.
Take trip by train or bus.
Hope no one forgets to make sure the new AA-bagged provisions are in the contract
Oh no. More pontificating drivel from the notoriously misinformed Gary Leff.
Pilots don’t have to inconvenience passengers to make the company take notice. Simply declare turbulence and ask for an altitude 10k feet lower for smoother air. Passengers aren’t inconvenienced and the fuel burn goes way up.
I hope they do strike because it will keep me from flying American.
I’ve been Executive Platinum for decades, and am a 6 million miler. So I’ve just about seen it all at AA. The pilot union and the FA union are two of the most malignant, dreadful, awful organizations that I’ve ever seen. They destroyed their first carrier (Eastern), they bankrupted their second carrier (the original AA) and forced it into the arms of a truly second-rate carrier (US Scare), and now they are attempting to do the same thing with “the New American Airlines. You know, many of us work some long hours, under a lots of stresses, to make a living. We don’t ever put our “customers” in the middle of our grievances (and in medicine, that would be an unconscionable thing to do). They chose the career of working in transportation, and should bear the difficulties of this career (while earning eye popping sums of money).
So very, very sad. I only wish that the ALPA would go out of existence, and that this dreadful union activity would cease. But, unfortunately, they will not cease until they have drained yet another carrier of all of its resources, leaving nothing behind except a hollow shell that can only provide the most basic services to passengers. A pox on the houses of the pilots and FA unions.
EdSparks58
@edsparks58 — It’s an odd loophole of the Railway Labor Act that allows pilots to unionize. Generally, professionals and other very highly compensated employees are NOT allowed to unionize. Because everyone knows it’s destructive to both themselves and their employers. But somehow, though an accident of history, a very old law that was drafted to cover train workers applies here. Politics being what they are, I don’t see this ever changing. Eventually, there will obviously be fewer pilots — certainly no more than one per aircraft — but for now, the current foolishness with continue.
Oh yippee, one more nail in the coffin of AA. First suffering through the absolute worst line up of incompetent CEOs (think Doug Parker) Mr whiner.
And the AA pilots, the greediest bunch of whiners of all airline employees.
The FAs are no better.