Airline Pilot Central Forums - No concessions!!!!

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Attachment 5827

Above is page 3 of 3 of a document entitled “COVID-19 and Force Majeure Claims in Performance of Contracts” published by the evil airline labor law firm, used by all airline managements, to explain how to leverage force majeure contractual clauses in the context of the covid crisis. You can read the full document for yourself here. FordHarrison wrote the book on airline union busting. No doubt the company’s entire strategy on this ploy is authored by them.

Basically, this is the company’s attempt to insert a force majeure clause into our contract after the fact. The 10% TFP rate cut is already a hard, hard, gfy no for me but the insertion of a force majeure clause is far more valuable than a 10% rate cut to the company. This is them attempting to achieve, outside of Section 6 and with a bullsh**, made-up sense of urgency, something they forgot to consider when the CBA was negotiated.

Force majeure = “Irregular Ops” applied to everything in the entire contract

Quote:

Originally Posted by PolishFlyerDude (Post 3143755)

Force majeure = “Irregular Ops” applied to everything in the entire contract

Exactly. We've all been burned by that little term.

I'm at 92%. Eff it. I'll go find another job. They can cram this up the cramhole.

A small point of clarification. At least in my experience in the past force majeur could not be applied to the entire contract. Only those sections that specifically mention force majeur as an excuse for failure to meet the terms of the contract.

For example, at Brand X after 2001 there were three sections of the sections of the contract that included force majeur - and all three of them allowed the company to shrink and outsource flying in a way that they would not otherwise be permitted to do.

- Minimum captain positions
- Minimum fleet count
- Minimum block hours

The President at the time, Rakesh Gangwal, was quoted to have said, "force majeur opens certain doors for us that were previously closed."

He was referring to scope language that was tied to mainline fleet count. Once that provision was deleted they were able to outsource virtually unlimited flying to the regional partners. Thousands of mainline pilots out of work for 7 years (thank you age 65) while the regional growth exploded.

Force majeur didn't, however, affect other areas of the contract where it wasn't mentioned - like line construction or hotels for example. It had to be specifically referenced in a section as a "get out of jail free" card for failure to perform to THAT SPECIFIC section of the CBA.

As such, I'm also a hard no on any TA that includes force majeur.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PolishFlyerDude (Post 3143755)

Force majeure = “Irregular Ops” applied to everything in the entire contract

From an outsider looking in it would seem for there to be a true no furlough agreement the agreement itself would need to go away immediately if there’s any furloughs. Not some clause that allows further concessions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZapBrannigan (Post 3143768)

Interesting you bring up Rakesh Gangwal and the way he handled the US Airways response to Sep 11. There was an academic paper published in 2005 entitled "Relationships, Layoffs, and Organizational Resilience: Airline Industry Responses to September 11 (available here) that contrasts the way US Airways handled Sep 11 to the way SWA handled it. Jim Parker was CEO back then. Things have changed a lot in 20 years with our stock-price-focused, uber accountant Gary Kelly at the helm.

Here's how the authors framed the US Airways response:

Quote:

“Despite US Airway’s huge losses, President Rakesh Gangwal said he is optimistic about the airline’s future. Specifically, he said the September 11 attacks have allowed the airline to restructure and downsize in ways that would have been impossible otherwise. Specifically, the attacks allow the airline to invoke force majeure clauses in union contracts and eliminate unprofitable routes. Force majeure is the legal term for an uncontrollable event that releases a party from its contractual obligations.”

“Gangwal said he expects the changes to be permanent. ‘I don’t want to take advantage of the situation, but we have to do what is right for the company,’ Gangwal said in a conference call with analysts. ‘And the events of September 11th have opened certain doors for the company that were pretty much closed before.”

Employees responded negatively to this apparent opportunism and disregard for human relationships on the part of US Airways’ leadership, and their representatives filed a series of grievances against the airline related to its use of the force majeure clause. The head of the pilots’ union noted, “We’ve been saying all along that management has been using force majeure not as an opportunity to get through a crisis, but to take advantage of a crisis”. Whether the actions taken by US Airways were legal or not, they are expected, based on our model, to do lasting damage to relational reserves as well as to undermine the credibility of its leadership. Indeed, US Airway’s leadership was replaced in early 2002 due in part to its loss of credibility with employees as a result of its response to the crisis of September 11th.

The authors then go on to use SWA as an example of a positive response to a crisis:

Quote:

The case of Southwest illustrates a different strategy for responding to the crisis. Southwest was determined to avoid layoffs altogether and couched its decision in terms of “taking care of our people.” Traditional wisdom suggests that avoiding layoffs in the face of a dramatic decline in demand would jeopardize Southwest’s short-term well being. That is, investing in relationships by avoiding layoffs would put short-term survival at risk, as was articulated by the senior executives of US Airways. Indeed, the company was reportedly losing “millions of dollars per day” (Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2001) in the weeks following the terrorist attacks. “Clearly we can’t continue to do this indefinitely,” said Southwest’s CEO Jim Parker. Still, he said, “we are willing to suffer some damage, even to our stock price, to protect the jobs of our people” (Conlin, 2001). Southwest indicated a willingness to suffer these immediate losses in order to achieve longer-term performance based on relational reserves.

The result was that while other airlines shed both employees and unprofitable routes, Southwest maintained a steady presence in the wake of the attacks, refusing to lay off any of its employees. Instead, Southwest treated the crisis as an opportunity to increase its presence and expand the availability of its service to the flying public. According to an aviation consultant: “They’re doing what they do best, which is to shine in the hours of trouble” (Trottman, 2001). Southwest used the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen rather than weaken employee relationships.

They go to include a quote from Herb about layoffs and how corrosive they are:

Quote:

Nothing kills your company’s culture like layoffs. Nobody has ever been furloughed [at Southwest], and that is unprecedented in the airline industry. It’s been a huge strength of ours… We could have furloughed at various times and been more profitable, but I always thought that was short-sighted. You want to show your people that you value them and you’re not going to hurt them just to get a little more money in the short term.

Good find! You should post that on the SWAPA forum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZapBrannigan (Post 3143768)

Zap, another point about the notion that could be inferred from what you posted that because force majeure clauses, from what you recall 20 years ago, were applied very specifically to limited, certain sections of your CBA with US Airways that it might mean this force majeure clause that Gary Kelly is attempting to slip into our CBA would be similarly limited: that's a leap of faith I'm not wiling to take. Nor should any of us of sane mind be willing to make that leap.

Having seen how this company will distort and stretch and manipulate and outright ignore our CBA (how many grievances?), does anyone think that if this force majeure clause ends up getting ratified by our pilot group that Gary Kelly will not apply or attempt to apply it broadly and globally to our entire CBA? The clause, as written, is simple and open to massive interpretational bias. There is nothing really specific about it that would stand up to any kind of challenge in a Trump-appointed NMB arbitration nor in a corporate-friendly Northern District of Texas federal courtroom.

I'm not saying you believe that the company wouldn't do that. But from what you posted, that idea could certainly be inferred. If that's what you believe, though, I want to disabuse you of that notion right now. If that's the case, put the koolaid cup down and take off the nikes. There is no luv alive here anymore. It's dead.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZapBrannigan (Post 3143802)

Good find! You should post that on the SWAPA forum.

Feel free. I avoid that place.

No, I agree with you. I just wanted to make the clarification.

Kind of like when people say the contract gets ripped up in bankruptcy court. No... that's not how this works.