USAPA President's Message
October 29, 2009
Fellow Pilots,
It is with a great deal of frustration and outrage that we continue to observe this management’s dismantling of our airline. The recent announcement of the sale of the 190s, coupled with yesterday’s announcement that Management intends to close long-standing pilot domiciles, certainly feeds the enormous mistrust that many of us share as we entrust the future of our airline to their managerial skill or lack thereof. The reasons for this mistrust are innumerable, but center on at least a couple of key areas.
First are the vast inconsistencies in their statements and actions. Let’s review some of the cavalier representations of the 190 sale event: first they told us the airplanes were not for sale; then they told us they were exploring the sale but that it was about taking capacity out of the U.S. market, with Lufthansa as the target customer; then we were assured that it wasn’t about liquidity it was about capacity. Now what we know is that all of those things were fabricated. There will be no capacity reduction; they have merely replaced this branded capacity with a set of pilots from another airline. Now they want us to believe, even though a fleet of 25 190s was too small to keep, that a fleet of 15 isn’t, and that they will keep this fleet deployed elsewhere.
The second key area of mistrust in this management group is their wholesale disregard for the effect of the uprooting of the lives of our pilots and their families. The sale of the 190s will have great impact on a substantial number of our pilots, many of whom have just returned from furlough, meaning they quit other jobs for the opportunity to come back to this company. The closing of three crew bases will be equally and powerfully impactive on our families as well. How could it be that this company could be so disinterested in our well being that they would fail, even on a cursory level, to try to work with the union ahead of time to address these issues and find solutions? We need to be honest with ourselves and recognize who these managers are as we evaluate our level of commitment to them. They have no plan for this airline, no vision for success. It is nothing more than crisis management while they bleed the coffers dry with their personal enrichment programs, all at our expense. I will bring a discussion item to the next Board of Pilot Representatives meeting to determine whether or not to seek new management at US Airways.
Further, it appears Management is either lying to the employees or lying to the public and investors. Take a few moments to compare their remarks and characterizations of the state of the company to the employees versus their characterization to the investment community:
Investors – strong demand, quickly improving revenue environment, not hedged and happy with that.
Employees – fuel spiking, economic crisis, doom and gloom.
The disparity reminds me of the very remarkable variance of Dave Siegel’s characterizations of the state of the airline and retirement plans to the same two groups back in the fall of 2002; with any fortune, he and his compatriots will pay for that contravention.
The product of these breaches of trust is that our company will never prosper until the employees are pulling in the same direction. I have had repeated conversations with them about how to make that happen, commonly asking them, “What can we do together, today, to get the employees working in same direction as Management to make our company profitable?” Each and every one of these overtures has been summarily dismissed by all levels of senior management. The most recent example of this was my attempt to have a very small and private meeting with Mr. Parker while I was in Phoenix this week to think through this fundamental question - this effort was rebuffed by Mr. Parker. I can only conclude that he just doesn’t care what we think or how we are impacted. He just doesn’t care. It is no coincidence that we are categorized as a cost center on our pay report.
Here’s what we can do about this.
The first and most important thing that we can do is to evaluate our working relationship with the Company. We have a management that deliberately designed their compensation package to profit wildly from our efforts to make the airline run on time, all while we toil under bankruptcy-era wages. In the process, they fattened the schedule creating a grossly inefficient airline specifically designed to enrich themselves. Each of us must take responsibility for enabling their engorgement at our personal expense, and the expense of the airline as a whole. Stop responding to their unending cries of corporate impoverishment. If they can’t run this airline with the employees working at such a tremendous cost advantage to their competitors then perhaps they need to move along. Of course, as we have witnessed in their attempt to peddle themselves to investors last year, no one wants them.
Second, your union will aggressively enforce our collective bargaining agreement. The base closure is subject to certain provisions in LOA 96 (the Transition Agreement) - the Company has an obligation to demonstrate a cost savings to the union from these closures and we will absolutely ensure their compliance with these contractual provisions. In the meantime, expect them to take the usual path of taking now with the expectation that we can grieve it later. So far we have only had an opportunity for a cursory financial analysis of these base closures; you may be sure that we will scrutinize the data. In addition, the minimum fleet and block hour commitment represent floors that they cannot penetrate as they try yet again to “shrink to profitability”. This management group is depending on their belief that the line pilots will not hold them accountable – each of us must. Prove them wrong.
This is our airline. Managements come and go, but this company belongs to those who built it and who will work here for our careers. They will not pry it from our hands. Sooner or later the scourge that is the dismantling of our airline by this management will end. We have the power to show Management who this airline belongs to. Ultimately the pilots will decide if they have tired of covering for and subsidizing what is demonstrably the most inefficient management group in the industry.
Sincerely,
Mike Cleary
President
USAPA
