The Mechanic & Related/Stores and Fleet Service Negotiating Committees met with American Airlines the week of March 28 in Dallas. Updates from both committees are below. Download M&R/Stores update   Download Fleet Service update

Mechanic & Related Joint Negotiations Update

On Monday, March 28, senior leadership of the company, under the stealth of darkness, held a town hall meeting in a hangar at DFW. Your nnegotiating committee, as well as local union leadership, was not informed of this meeting and would have welcomed the opportunity to have attended, to express our concerns regarding negotiations. During the meeting senior leadership attempted to take negotiations to the membership on the floor. The company kept focusing on one subject (compensation), which your committee agrees is a critical piece of the process. However, your committee is not willing to accept inferior contractual language, to subsidize any pay raises. Your committee has expressed our displeasure to this tactic across the table on Tuesday morning.

We share your frustration; however, your committee will remain focused on the negotiating process to ensure we meet the needs of our members.

Your negotiating committee, during this session, worked on the following articles:

• Leaves of Absences: we have exchanged multiple proposals with the company.
• Hours of service/Rotation of shifts: we continued to work on combining these two articles that we initially received from the company last week and are preparing to pass.
• Shift Swaps: we began to draft our proposal to pass to the company.

The parties have agreed to the negotiations schedule below for the next 3 months:

Fleet Service Negotiations Update

The Joint Association Fleet Committee exchanged the following proposals with the company this week:

• Hours of Work
• Recognition of Rights and Compliance
• Grievance Procedures
• Meal Periods
• Leaves of Absence
• Shift Differential/Shift Definitions
• Training, Travel and Meal Per Diems

We are pleased to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement on the Training, Travel and Meal Per Diem article.

Despite this progress, unfortunately, the company did hold a meeting this week without inviting Association representatives, and actually left a bargaining session in order to attend.

Unbeknownst to the negotiating team, Robert Isom, American Airlines’ Chief Operating Officer, conducted a town hall meeting on Tuesday in Dallas without notifying any of our team members. American’s Director of Employee Relations, Jim Weel—who is part of the company’s M&R negotiating team and attended the session that morning—left the bargaining meeting in order to attend the town hall. This lack of transparency and commitment to the bargaining process will not be tolerated.

It is clear that American Airlines is not providing the membership with entirely accurate information, and that they are employing common management tactics to disrupt negotiations. While Mr. Isom assures us that the company is not holding up the process, they continue to offer our negotiation teams proposals which do not recognize the role our members have in sustaining American’s profits—and those are proposals that we will not accept.

Our future Fleet negotiations dates and locations are as follows:

We will continue to provide updates to membership following each negotiation session, and appreciate your continued patience and support.