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On 12/28/2002 7:53:40 AM Steiner wrote:
ual747mech, you have a tone in your writing that usually appears when an IAM official is about to lose their union position and associated perks. Do you know where your toolbox is, and can you identify it? Is it conceivable that the membership feels it has less to lose in a bankruptcy court than the union leadership does? Do you think the membership will believe what the union leaders are saying after all these years?
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I'm not a fan of the IAM but if you look at what the AFA and ALPA are saying you will find out that it's really true that the Company is about to crash and that's why they are desperate to cut cost everywhere they can. Sure! we can resist concession all we want but theres a risk of we end up giving up more. We resisted the concession previously that had the potential of keeping the Company out of Bankruptcy had we gotten the ATSB loan. I know that in the end that didn't matter anyway but the intent was to keep the Company out of Bankruptcy which would've been less painful. Hindsight is 20/20.
Now that we are in bankruptcy, we are faced with a bigger slice of the s**t pie concession but before we go and say hell no but f**k no like last time I think we better see why it's better to accept it than reject it because theres always a risk of we end up getting much shi**ier deal. Continental imposed a 60% paycut and drastic benefit changes to their employees after they got the contracts rejected. It took them a while to get back to industry standard. Go to the AFA Bankruptcy Q and A and you will find out what I'm talking about. You can also dig up information about the history of Continental if you don't believe it. Dig up information on your own if you don't believe what your union official is saying. Look at what the other Unions are saying, its not hard to do these days to dig up information, we're in the internet age.
When it's time for us to vote, if they bring back a tentative agreement for us to vote on, go ask the union officials question to get information. Ask them what they recommend on how we should vote and ask why they would recommend that. If you don't trust them then try to verify on your own whether what they are saying is true or not.
Like I said, I am not a fan of the IAM because of secret negotiation, lack of information(its actually improved now that they're putting more information on their website), and lack of leadership to go out and inform the membership. Sometimes I can't really blame them since there's so many AMFA fanatics who don't trust them. I prefer AMFA myself but I don't really care anymore because there are so many negative people out there and most of them are AMFA fanatics. There are people who will vote no just because it's the IAM who negotiated it. People don't just think anymore, they don't bother asking for information, they will vote no without thinking of the consequences.