4.16.03

This is APFA President John Ward. Today is Wednesday, April 16.

As was announced earlier this evening on this hotline, the results of the balloting for the Restructuring Proposal are as follows:

Yes	10,761
No	9,652

That’s approximately an 83% participation level.

I’d like to say a few words this evening about yesterday’s decision by the APFA Board of Directors to extend the balloting for an additional day. After careful consideration, the Board determined that it was in the best interests of the membership to allow the extension of the balloting period due to several factors. The vote count as it existed as of 10 AM yesterday was not among the reasons. The fact is both the American Arbitration Association (AAA for short) and APFA Headquarters were deluged with phone calls prior to the 15th from members who were unable to vote due to technical problems of one sort or another with the telephonic voting system. These problems included never receiving a PIN number to difficulties accessing the toll-free number to vote, etc. In addition, and this is very important, the terms of the Restructuring Proposal had changed several times during the course of the balloting period including as late as 8:00 PM the night before the ballots were due. While APFA did its best to convey these changes to the membership, many members may not have been made aware of them in such a short period of time. And although final language of the Restructuring Proposal had been posted on the APFA web site for days, the printed version that was sent via mail had just begun arriving on the West and East Coasts on Monday. For these reasons, the balloting period was extended until 5:00 PM tonight. As a result of this decision, and additional 1,430 members were given the opportunity to cast a ballot. This number does not include those who voted previously but who, once given the opportunity to do so and for whatever reason, changed their vote either from yes to no or no to yes. And many members did, in fact, take advantage of that opportunity.

The last two months have been extremely difficult for the APFA membership and right now, I know the days ahead don’t look very bright either. I’m well aware that the morale out there is at an all-time low. We will no doubt, in the days ahead, be notified of additional furloughs and we all know the Company will waste no time in implementing with lightning speed each and every one of these concessions. But we must pick up the pieces and go on. Management has succeeded in securing $1.8 billion in concessions from labor that it said it needed to avoid bankruptcy. But don’t permit them to take from us our unity. Although this vote has divided the membership right down the middle, we can overcome this whole horrible ordeal. It won’t be easy and we’re not naive to the fact that, while we dodged a bullet this time, this Company may still declare bankruptcy in the future. Should that occur, we must be prepared– and by that I mean unified– to effectively deal with such an occurrence.

Thank you for calling.

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This is George Price, APFA National Communications Coordinator, with a special APFA Hotline for April 16th, 2003.

The American Arbitration Association has certified the results of the balloting for the APFA/AAL Restructuring Participation Agreement. They are as follows:

Yes	10,761
No	9,652
Ineligible	592
Total Votes Cast	21,005

The APFA/AAL Restructuring Participation Agreement has been ratified by the APFA membership.

Please call back later this evening for a message from APFA President John Ward.