AA and APA will return to negotiations
American Airlines has made a formal request of the Allied Pilots Association to return to the negotiating table. We believe this is entirely due to the “work to rules” action that pilots are engaging in over the past few weeks at American Airlines. Hey, when your on-time record plunges more than 20 percentage points in a month’s time, you’ve got to do something.
Frankly, I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand, it’s rewarding atrocious behavior designed to directly impact customers and thereby directly impact a company that continues to issue paychecks to these same pilots.
On the other hand, I would point a finger at American Airlines and point out that while the company did try to make a deal, it wasn’t done out of sheer anger. No one at AA understands that the rage among labor needs to be cooled. This is a mistake that gets repeated over and over and over again in the airline world and I do not understand it.
Both parties have done very badly for their constituents and both need to clean up their behavior. Neither will.
AMR has never bargained with APA in good faith. Ever. American brought this current round of bad PR and delays down upon their own heads. It is not enough to merely show up across the table from the representatives of the people who make your money for you and spout the same old drek over and over and over again.
The Pilots Union has to use whatever tools it has in its toolbox, when directed to do so by the Rank and File, and in the absence of a strike (which would be most counterproductive for all parties), a work-to-rules action gets the point across.
Whether one considers the Work-To-Rules action a “slow-down” or not tells us more about the political and philosophical leanings of the observer, I believe, than it does about the actions of the APA.
-R
American Must Die