Friday, August 17, 2012

American Airlines creditors urge union employees to agree to new labor contracts

The creditors’ committee of American Airlines (AA) parent AMR Corp. issued a stark warning to AA pilots and other unionized employees of the carrier and regional affiliate American Eagle to “promptly” reach consensual agreements with management on new labor contracts.

The creditors’ committee, in a lengthy statement issued after its labor subcommittee met Thursday, said AA and Eagle workers “should not misinterpret” the decision by a US bankruptcy judge to deny AA’s request to terminate its labor contract with its pilots.

“Contrary to initial press reports, the court upheld [AA’s] motion in its entirety, except for two specific contract proposals relating to codesharing and pilot furloughs,” the committee stated. “These proposals have already been modified by the company in the recent [tentative] agreement voted on by American’s pilots [rejected 61%-39%] and the committee believes that the court will promptly sustain the company’s position when the court considers the company’s revised motion [expected to contain language similar to the tentative agreement] in early September.”

The committee emphasized it has “concluded that there is no additional economic value beyond the current company offers that can be provided to the company’s labor organizations without endangering AMR’s reorganization and the rights and economic interests of nonunion creditors and parties in interest. Accordingly, the committee … will oppose any new efforts to transfer additional economic value from general unsecured creditors to American’s unionized employees.”

It noted the pilots and other work groups are being offered equity stakes in the company, but warned that continuing to reject management’s offers will likely result in no equity for the workers. “The committee will not support equity stakes or claims for any labor organization that does not ratify a collective bargaining agreement nor will the committee support any further economic value to labor organizations beyond the current proposals,” it said.

Early next month, the court is expected to consider and rule on AA’s revised request to abrogate the labor contract for its 10,000 pilots if no consensual accord has been reached.

(Aaron Karp - ATWOnline News)

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