Vote once, vote twice...
Ok, here's the skinny on whats been going on and what I think about it. First, a brief recap. The flight attendants were the last of the three unions to ratify a concession aggreement with the company on April 16th. The next day, AA filed its annual financial report with the SEC. In that report, it was disclosed that AA offered retention bonues and a supplemental pension plan for the top 45 brass at AA, despite the economic hardship the company is facing, and despite employees giving up substantial parts of their salaries and benefits. The employees and unions are fired up because the company didn't diclose this before the concession agreements went to membership vote for ratification. Everyone is crying foul, saying the agreements weren't made in good faith, and management knowingly and purposefully left this information out, worrying that the information may taint the votes, resulting in a NO vote. Sounds horrible, yeah? Well, kind of. It's not until you read the facts that things start to make sense.
The retention bonuses are offered to management every year. They are especially important now since most of upper management has a relatively low base wage... getting the majority of their compensation from bonuses based on performance and profits. Additionally, they are given stock options as part of their compensation. There are no bonuses if there is no profit, and who'd want stock options for a stock trading below $2? Not many. In order to keep these people from jumping ship and heading off to other companies (usually outside the industry), they try to make up for some of the loss with these retention bonuses. Employees are often concerned if mangement has taken their fare share of paycuts, and, in reality, they've been affected a lot more than I. Granite, they make a lot more money than I, but I have a different lifestyle, too. Management has seen a paycut of around 45%, a hell of a lot more than what I was asked to give. The good news out of all this? The majority, if not all of upper management, gave up their retention bonues. The other "atrocity" was the company made a payment of $45 million to a pension trust for the top 45 brass at AA. *gasp* Guess what? That pension plan was created in 1985 and the company has never put a single dime in it. How much did the company put in employee's pensions last year? $420 million. AA contributed to the plan in case of bankruptcy and liquidation, to ensure management had a pension to leave with. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
But when you get a bunch of uneducated, blue collar workers together who can't think for themselves, you get a work group who feels they must watch their back, and that the company is out to get them. I can't blame the company for not disclosing this information. It would have swayed the votes to NO because people get too emotional over the issues and don't look at the facts. They only look at what they think will affect them, always failing to think about what might happen to others, more importantly, others who work for the same company. I hope there isn't a revote, because I can guarantee the vote will more than likely be more than 70% NO, even though the first vote was damn near split down the middle, with yes getting a little more than 11-hundred votes more than no.
I think the timing is a little bad on the company's part, and I think the informations should have been disclosed ahead of time. Had the company released it early enough, they could've done enough marketing and campaigning to the employees and union leadership to explain exactly what it all meant. Now, in the matter the information came to light, people can only deduce the company was hiding the informaiton purposefully. I think they were, but I am smart enough to know it was a must for the company, otherwise, we'd be sitting in bankruptcy right now.
What do I think will happen from here? I am not sure. I really hope we don't revote and things stay as is. I am worried about getting furloughed now, but if we file bankruptcy, it's a virtual given. It'd only be a matter of time.
Ok, here's the skinny on whats been going on and what I think about it. First, a brief recap. The flight attendants were the last of the three unions to ratify a concession aggreement with the company on April 16th. The next day, AA filed its annual financial report with the SEC. In that report, it was disclosed that AA offered retention bonues and a supplemental pension plan for the top 45 brass at AA, despite the economic hardship the company is facing, and despite employees giving up substantial parts of their salaries and benefits. The employees and unions are fired up because the company didn't diclose this before the concession agreements went to membership vote for ratification. Everyone is crying foul, saying the agreements weren't made in good faith, and management knowingly and purposefully left this information out, worrying that the information may taint the votes, resulting in a NO vote. Sounds horrible, yeah? Well, kind of. It's not until you read the facts that things start to make sense.
The retention bonuses are offered to management every year. They are especially important now since most of upper management has a relatively low base wage... getting the majority of their compensation from bonuses based on performance and profits. Additionally, they are given stock options as part of their compensation. There are no bonuses if there is no profit, and who'd want stock options for a stock trading below $2? Not many. In order to keep these people from jumping ship and heading off to other companies (usually outside the industry), they try to make up for some of the loss with these retention bonuses. Employees are often concerned if mangement has taken their fare share of paycuts, and, in reality, they've been affected a lot more than I. Granite, they make a lot more money than I, but I have a different lifestyle, too. Management has seen a paycut of around 45%, a hell of a lot more than what I was asked to give. The good news out of all this? The majority, if not all of upper management, gave up their retention bonues. The other "atrocity" was the company made a payment of $45 million to a pension trust for the top 45 brass at AA. *gasp* Guess what? That pension plan was created in 1985 and the company has never put a single dime in it. How much did the company put in employee's pensions last year? $420 million. AA contributed to the plan in case of bankruptcy and liquidation, to ensure management had a pension to leave with. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
But when you get a bunch of uneducated, blue collar workers together who can't think for themselves, you get a work group who feels they must watch their back, and that the company is out to get them. I can't blame the company for not disclosing this information. It would have swayed the votes to NO because people get too emotional over the issues and don't look at the facts. They only look at what they think will affect them, always failing to think about what might happen to others, more importantly, others who work for the same company. I hope there isn't a revote, because I can guarantee the vote will more than likely be more than 70% NO, even though the first vote was damn near split down the middle, with yes getting a little more than 11-hundred votes more than no.
I think the timing is a little bad on the company's part, and I think the informations should have been disclosed ahead of time. Had the company released it early enough, they could've done enough marketing and campaigning to the employees and union leadership to explain exactly what it all meant. Now, in the matter the information came to light, people can only deduce the company was hiding the informaiton purposefully. I think they were, but I am smart enough to know it was a must for the company, otherwise, we'd be sitting in bankruptcy right now.
What do I think will happen from here? I am not sure. I really hope we don't revote and things stay as is. I am worried about getting furloughed now, but if we file bankruptcy, it's a virtual given. It'd only be a matter of time.
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