Originally Posted by
Margaritaville
Actually, you're wrong, as usual. You can't involuntarily staple an acquired labor group, but they certainly can agree to it voluntarily. Usually how they are convinced to agree to that is the threat of a shutdown or dissolution of the deal. Ask the AirTran pilots.
AA and APA could certainly offer the WOs a take it or leave it staple deal, and if they turn around and demand integration, the deal goes away, and their flying gets transferred to SkyWest, Mesa, and Air Wisconsin. Checkmate.
So yeah, you can still staple people. You just can't force it on them anymore like TWA.
One large problem with your statement. APA does not decide if there will be a merger or not. The American management will decide that. If they decide to merge your feeders you can’t force anything. In the case of SWA management worked with SWAPA to force the issue just a they did with the Frontier merger. Do you think management is going to give you veto power on a merger. I suspect not.