First off, I'm not a new hire. Second, furloughees should be considered based on how much time they actually spent on property as an active employee, in addition to their relative position on the list, not their date of hire.

You really think a furloughee that only spent one year on the property should be on top of a US pilot with 5 years continuous service?

Trust me most of us in the pool are watching closely, and if it was about us new hires, we'd be jumping up and down telling you to vote yes for those enticing first year payrates. But we're not zoo animals, we look past the tasty morsel in front of us and we're looking at the whole package which locks us into industry lagging pay and work rules until 2020. Vote no for you AND for us. Well all be better off for it.

On top or a third lister who was hired post merger announcement? Yes. Absolutely. No questions about it. Irregardless of any DOJ stuff.m the only one who thought the merger wouldn't happen was canoe pilot.

Where do we sit on this? Has the contract language been released? I can't find it on the APA site, yet on C&R a thread eluded to it having be read by a poster.

It's on the APA Negotiations page. Unfortunately it's the entire edited contract, so you have to weed through what's changed and not changed. Some people have been claiming to find "hidden items" when in actuality those things were already in our contract. If it wasn't lined out in red and replaced with new language, it's a carryover from the original MTA.

Scott is coached by Glass and is trying to get us to take the bait and get 50%+1. Vote NO and we will get parity rates at or greater than their offer without concessions. Vote NO!

Scott Kirby
President


January 11, 2015

Dear Pilots:

We have heard from many of you since our letter on Friday. Thank you for reaching out. Most all of those we have heard from have asked about the January 19 deadline for ratification for the new pay rates to be retroactive to December 2. And many of you have suggested that the January 19 deadline is unreasonable, based on the representation by the APA Board that it did not receive the final Domestic-International language until January 9.

If that representation were an accurate statement of the facts, of course, it would be unreasonable to ask for a January 19 ratification. But that representation is neither accurate nor fair to our pilots. We have worked very hard to not get into the blow-by-blow account of the APA Boards inaccuracies, but with the ratification date ahead, it now seems important that we do so. The fact is that the APA Board has known about the January 19 deadline since December 23 when the Company agreed to extend the retro pay deadline for the third time. Moreover, until December 29, the APA negotiating committee and the Company had an agreed approach to the D-I issue and agreed upon language that would support that approach. Finally, after the APA Board asked for more detailed language on Domestic-International, we agreed to try, and we delivered the D-I language to the APA Board on January 3. Unfortunately, the APA Board then spent the next six days attempting to renegotiate concepts that had long been agreed to at the table, knowing full well that they had also agreed to a January 19 deadline for retroactivity, and that that date was fast approaching.

There are numerous other examples of this kind of non-helpful back and forth that have occurred over the past several months, but that isn't really important at this point. Bottom line, know that the January 19 deadline was set on December 23, agreed to by the APA Board, and that management ensured the APA Board had everything it would need to meet that deadline. One of the more distressing mischaracterizations has been the APA Board's disparagement of the Company's negotiators. Most of those are fellow employees who work in finance, labor and flight operations, and who support all of us. That team worked tirelessly and extensively over the Holidays, and we should all be proud to work with such committed individuals who, like you, simply want to move forward as one team.

So here we are, management and union debating in public but the ones getting hurt are our line pilots. You are the ones who lose two months of retroactive pay increases if the ratification date does not move. Irrespective of how we got here, the fact is that our pilots did not get the Company's proposal from the APA Board until January 9, and our line pilots deserve some time to consider the proposal. The objective of the January 19 deadline was not to rush you. The objective was to force the APA Board to act and provide our pilots the opportunity to vote on a proposal that would improve their compensation and benefits by $2 billion over the JCBA implemented by arbitration. And fortunately, that objective has been achieved. Accordingly, today we are reaching out to the APA Board to extend the date for pay retroactivity to January 30.

Thank you for bearing with us through this process. There is certainly a lot of lingering mistrust to overcome and we are committed to doing just that over time. Please take the time you need to understand our proposal and vote how you see fit. So long as the offer is ratified by January 30, the new pay rates will be effective retroactive to December 2. Thanks for taking the time to read yet another letter on this topic, and thank you for your commitment to American.


Scott

This is why Jerrold gets the big bucks. Which is amazing because it is so obvious.

The Green Book as it stands is simply better in the aggregate over the life of it's term, both financially and in 'work rules'. That is why a 'No' vote is the smart economic choice.

Only 11 months left to go until a substantial industry indexed pay raise while we preserve all the leverage of the concessions they want now for pennies on the dollar.

As to the lingering mistrust... you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Even "Yes" voters know they've been played, taking the bribe doesn't equal trust.

Been wondering the same thing. A US guy hired a month after me will hit year 2 pay more than a month earlier than I will. Hardly keeping with the theory of one set of work rules/conditions for all groups. I suspect things are so screwed that there's been little to no thought about it by the NCs (both co and APA).

I think they adopted the US system. I remember reading that change somewhere.

Well, everyone wanted complete language, right? :D

Funny how many of them never knew we had a 1-3.25 rig in the MOU and the APA gave it up.