AAL Contract Offer Increased by $9-Billion

American Airlines (AAL) agreed to raise the contract offer tendered to its pilot cadre by upwards of one-billion-dollars for purpose of approximating a tentative agreement reached by rival air-carrier United Airlines and its pilots.

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom set forth the Fort Worth, Texas-headquartered air-carrier’s total offer currently equals approximately $9-billion in incremental compensation and benefits and includes both a pay-raise for pilots and a significant ratification bonus.

Mr. Isom further stated the United Airlines agreement “changed the landscape” insomuch as it committed United to the provision of pilot wages higher than those set in negotiations between Delta Air Lines and its pilots.

“The wages and retro-pay matched the best in the industry—which, at the time, was Delta,” Isom reflected, adding: “And the Tentative Agreement (TA) includes significant unique quality-of-life provisions critically important to American’s pilots.”

Isom and American’s management aspire to see a labor agreement with the airline’s pilots ratified by August 2023.

However, the board of directors of the Allied Pilots Association (APA)—the labor union by which American’s more than 14,000 pilots are represented—reported in a statement that Isom’s announcement denoted an “offer that included the least-critical elements prioritized by the board and was riddled with contingencies that would justifiably fail to pass muster with our members.”

The board further stated American’s offer lags, still, behind the industry standard and contains provisions that have “already been established as the minimum standard for pilots at our peer airlines.” The Allied Pilots Association promised a swift and comprehensive counterproposal.

On 14 July, United Airlines pilots represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) reached a deal in principle with the airline’s management by which the aviators will receive a forty-percent pay-raise. Over its lifetime, the contract represents approximately $10-billion in value, and includes improvements to “quality of work-life, compensation, job security, work rules, retirement, benefits.”

The United agreement compelled American Airlines pilots to remain steadfast in their demands.

In response to the United Airlines labor agreement, Allied Pilot Association president Ed Sicher opined it was “dead obvious” the contract proffered by American’s management was “woefully deficient by comparison.”

On 06 June 2023 the Allied Pilots Association rejected a proposed merger with ALPA. The APA’s decision was predicated primarily upon a consensus that merging with ALPA would provide insufficient benefit vis-à-vis the liabilities inherent forfeiture of the collective, independent voice of APA’s membership.

AA Pilots for ALPA, a grassroots group of American Airlines pilots supportive of merger with ALPA, worked for months to persuade APA leadership to investigate the ostensible benefits of such an alignment. At the group’s behest, APA commissioned the formation of a merger exploratory committee which produced a report setting forth that an APA/ALPA merger, though beneficial in some respects, was not in American Airlines pilots’ best long-term interests.

Notwithstanding its merger exploratory committee’s broader findings, the APA executive board staunchly maintained its decision to reject the ALPA merger was based on economics. The APA executive board contended, also, that merger with ALPA would see APA, in its entirety, reduced to a so-called Master Executive Council (MEC)—an entity with greatly-diminished financial autonomy—under the ALPA banner.

FMI: www.alliedpilots.org