Who Saved Who...
America West and US Airways merged in September 2005. At this time, US Airways was in Chapter 11 and very close to being liquidated.
The US Airways pilots would have all lost their jobs if their airline had gone into Chapter 7.
At the time of the merger, US Airways had over 1700 pilots on furlough (i.e. they had been laid off). They had not hired a new pilot in 17 years. America West was growing and had just hired a new pilot within the last 3 months.
As of today, all of the furloughed US Airways pilots have been recalled and almost 200 of the America West pilots have been furloughed.
Possible Reasons Why US Airways was in Ch. 11...
While they were in bankruptcy, the US Airways pilots agreed to a large (around 50%) pay cut. After this pay cut, their salary was almost equal to the salary of the America West pilots.
US Airways procedure dictates that they have all three engines running at all times. America West planes use only 1 engine for the majority of their taxi, saving fuel and lowering their operating costs.
Seniority Controversy...
The US Airways pilots wanted to use date-of-hire as the basis for the merged seniority list (including for the furloughed pilots), which would put almost 80% of the America West pilots at the bottom of the list. The America West pilots wanted to use a percentage method, where if you were in the top 1% of your old company you would be in the top 1% of the new company.
The US Airways and American West pilots could not agree on a method and their unions (two different chapters of ALPA) agreed to go to binding arbitration.
The arbiter (George Nicolau) came up with a hybrid method which awarded the top 517 slots for US Airways pilots and then blended the remaining pilots.
Rather than accepting the results of arbitration ("Nicolau award") as ALPA had agreed to do, the US Airways pilots formed a new union, which they call USAPA.
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2 comments:
That was interesting to read. And I hate unions too.
Yeah, that blows. Unions had a place when people were being killed on the job and no pay, but in this day and age, there is JACK SCHIT that unions seem to do besides con companies.... Mother effers....
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