by Donald Wood
Last updated: 11:26 AM ET, Thu July 27, 2017
Around 600 American Airlines maintenance workers picketed out front of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Wednesday to demand higher pay and put an end to the company shifting maintenance work overseas.
According to The Associated Press, the Transport Workers Union organized two rallies at the Texas airport Wednesday after the American Airlines Group Inc. earned $2.7 billion last year, yet workers have been negotiating for a new contract since late 2015.
The union argues that workers need higher wages to make up for concessionary contracts, which were approved when the airline was in financial distress in 2003 and 2012. Now that the company is once again thriving, the workers want the airline to meet its demands.
"They are not going to hoard it all to themselves," Transport Workers Union president John Samuelson said in a statement. "The TWU work force is going to get their fair share in this contract negotiation."
The Transport Workers Union claims American is also increasing its profits by moving some maintenance work from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to foreign shops, including a planned maintenance facility in Brazil.
In response, American spokesman Matt Miller said the airline offered the union a contract proposal last week that would protect jobs even with the new Brazilian construction. The new facility would only service large planes for flights to and from the United States, with work already being done in Brazil on the company's planes by non-transport union workers.
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Miller also said American already issued pay raises, including increases of between 15 percent and 36 percent for many maintenance workers.
Samuelson responded by saying that even with last year's raises, the ground workers are already falling behind the pay of other airlines and also have insufficient health and pension benefits.
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