Thursday, August 9, 2012

American Airlines pilots give a "thumbs down" to latest contract offer

American Airlines’ (AA) pilots have voted to reject management’s latest labor contract proposal, pushing the contentious debate over work rules and benefits back to a US bankruptcy court.

The leadership of the Allied Pilots Assn. (APA), the union representing AA’s 10,000 flight deck crew, in late June reluctantly agreed to tentatively accept AA’s proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement and put it to a vote of rank-and-file pilots.

APA leadership did so largely to avoid having the bankruptcy court impose new work rules on the pilots; AA has been in Chapter 11 protection since November.

But by a 61%-39% margin, the pilots rejected the deal, APA announced Wednesday.

“The judge has stated that on August 14, without a consensual agreement, he will abrogate our labor contract” and impose new work rules, APA spokesman Tom Hoban said. He added that new negotiations with AA management on a revised labor contract proposal are a “possibility, but it better happen very quick.”

AA said it was “disappointed” by the vote and will now turn to the court to impose work rule changes that will enable the airline to emerge from bankruptcy.

Hoban said APA would “like to fix the issues in this tentative agreement [that caused it to be voted down] and get it ratified.” A first officer with the airline, he explained that pilots are frustrated with AA management and expressed their dissatisfaction through voting down AA’s latest offer, which would have given flight deck crew a 13.5% equity stake in the company.

“There’s a sense that the pilots don’t want to give anymore,” Hoban said, citing concessions already made since 2003. “There’s just a lot of anger over what’s happened over the last decade.”

(Aaron Karp - ATWOnline News)

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