TWU514 President
Dale Danker
On Monday September 16, 2013, Bill Collins and his staff met with the Local TWU officers, Chairman, and E-board to review the workload for 2014 and 2015.
The speculation that a merger with USAir ways would keep the Tulsa base at 90% capacity for two years was information not known to AA management. International President Jim Little presented this information to our membership when he visited Tulsa, however to our knowledge this is not enforceable per our current language.
As we went through the presentation, the company information showed we should prepare for a surplus of no more than 400 positions around the first quarter of 2014. This surplus would likely include all title groups. In addition, they are planning to give the airline additional aircraft for the peak summer flying months, which would create a temporary surplus during the summer of 2014. We did discuss some options to address the summer surplus, such as allowing more vacation use during the summer.
In regard to the surplus, we discussed the SIS (stand-in-stead) program, which may allow employees to sign up for government retraining through the TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) program.
As many of you are aware, as the older fleets are retired and new aircraft are brought on board, we are faced with the challenge of dealing with the required maintenance need declining year over year.
As your new local leadership, we are doing everything in our power to persuade the company to source work in-house rather than continue to source it out. As this goes to print, we currently have a team made up of management and TWU working to bring the B767 Retro/NGS work to Tulsa. This work would begin in March of 2014 and is projected to run through June of 2015.
In Solidarity,
Dale Danker