Disapointment

[Jim Martin]

Well it happened, Thursday came and went and we the members still have know more answers than they did before. The TWU and AMFA wanted to play politics and not play well together. They will do the same on Saturday. I'm starting to think that both sides are all about the money ,for themselves, and care nothing about the members. It's pretty sad that it has come to this. At this point I'm not sure I want either of them. There were alot of people on both sides of this that could have debated the issues and decided not to. I've signed my card, so AMFA if you got the cards file. TWU no matter what happens you should be working on getting all the stuff back you lost us, plus some accountability from our ATD.

You all make me sick.

P.S. If you post under a alias don't bother responding because you've got no balls.

 

[Buck]

Jim, you are right. It is sad. Twenty years of concessions, twenty years of hey I got mine brother, twenty years of screwing the next generation of mechanics. So why don't we just have an election and get this over with. Let's have some democracy.

 

[Bob Owens]

Well it happened, Thursday came and went and we the members still have know more answers than they did before. The TWU and AMFA wanted to play politics and not play well together. They will do the same on Saturday. I'm starting to think that both sides are all about the money ,for themselves, and care nothing about the members. It's pretty sad that it has come to this. At this point I'm not sure I want either of them. There were alot of people on both sides of this that could have debated the issues and decided not to. I've signed my card, so AMFA if you got the cards file. TWU no matter what happens you should be working on getting all the stuff back you lost us, plus some accountability from our ATD.

You all make me sick.

P.S. If you post under a alias don't bother responding because you've got no balls.

Jim;

I agree with the Tulsa organizers decision not to participate. None of those guys are officers in AMFA and any questions from the TWU crowd would have been geared towards NWA, UAL, Alaska or other carriers that these guys would have little knowledge. It is likely that Luby or other TWU officials would have prepped their guys, plus stacked the audience with paid TWU officials. Like I said in another post, this was not a debate, it was an ambush.

As far as a debate between members we have that here. If anything, since participants can remain anonymous they are more likely to say and ask exactly what is on their mind.

The fact is that all organizations are run by its leaders. No organization is run by its members. They can and should be accountable to the members but they still are not really run by the members. The members pay its leaders to do that. This does not mean that members should not participate but to say that 15000 people run something is rediculous. If they were run by the members there would be no need for leaders. The leaders run the unions. A more accurate statement is that they should be run for the members. The critical difference on this issue is that AMFA's leaders are accountable to the members while in the TWU they are not. This presents a big problem for members because since there is no accountability there is very little opportunity for us to make sure that they are running it for us, or for themselves.

Case in point is Jim Little. Jim Little is the appointed head of the ATD. He was put in place by Sonny Hall who is not elected by the members but rather at a Convention where he or someone he appoints to the chair in his abscence controls all discussion and the vote by delegates. Despite the fact that delegates do the voting no record is made in order to report to the membership who voted which way. So Jim Little is not accountable to the members at AA in any way. We did not vote for him and we can not vote for the guy who apponted him. We can not even find out how our delegates voted in the Convention that put the guy that put the guy who is in charge of the ATD in place!


To add insult to injury the ATD Director can in turn make other appointments. So now we have a guy that we cant vote for or against putting in place someone that we cant vote for who in turn puts in place someone else we cant vote for who are all above our Local Presidents in authority over our contracts. Ex- Sonny Hall-Jim Little- Bobby Gless.

If our Presidents or other elected officials dont tow the International line as dictated by several levels of unelected(by the members) officials they risk being removed from office and being put on "trial".

In my case Sonny Hall removed me from office, had Bobby Gless (appointed by Little who was appointed by Sonny) do the prosecution, while Herbert Snead (appointed under Sonny Hall as head of the transit division), Richie Holley (appointed under Sonny Hall as International rep), and George Roberts (who also holds an appointed position under Sonny Hall) render judgement. So you have a situation where the appointed and unelected are in a position to remove anyone who is accountable who truly represents their members interests. What can you as a TWU member realistically do about this? Not much.

Sonny Hall and Jim Little are no more accountable to us than Don Carty or Gerard Arpey. The only difference is that we pay them instead of them paying us. As we took massive pay cuts they did not. Even Arpey took more of a cut than Sonny or Little. Carty ended up resigning, Little and Hall are still there. As a Stockholder I can vote on Carty or Arpey but as a dues paying member I cant vote on Hall or Little. I can sell my stock and still work for AA but I'm forced to pay Hall and Little even though I have no say. Dont get me wrong, I'm dead set against RTW, but compulsory dues without democratic safeguards is extortion. The contract that I work under does not belong to you, me or our locals, it belongs to the International and not one International officer faces an election from the rank and file that work under the contract.

The fact is that all airline workers, especially TWU represented airline workers have suffered under this poor excuse of a union. We have a membership that does not identify with its leaders and a leadership that detests its members. How often have you heard the members say good things about this union? How often have you heard the leaders sincerely say good things about the members? In my short term in office Ive heard a string of negative comments about the membership from our leaders. Sonny Hall calls being an elected official a "thankless job", its certainly is not as thankful as his $200,000/ yr job but to have your peers choose you to be their representative and then to charecterize it as "thankless" only reveals their deep contempt for those they claim to represent. Mike Bakala admits that unions are in bad shape but insists that its "all the members fault" because "they are afraid to fight". When I challenged that statement by asking him when the members failed to follow their leaders into a fight, he changed the subject. Jim Little puts out posts about organizers who got fired but them makes all sorts of excuses as to why we should do nothing to help the guy, "the AFL isnt doing anything" "The members dont care".This union has and continues to lead the industry in concessions. They claim to have 60,000 airline members. The overwhelming majority of those members make less than $15/hr. I believe that the minimum wage in San Francisco is $15/hr. This union is nothing more than a business. They supply labor at the lowest rates to corporations.

I tried change from within. Many of the Presidents are simply there to try and get an International position like Bobby Gless. They get sucked in with the self seriving "thankless job" and "apathetic membership" speaches from the International. Its a viscious cycle. They may start off with the best of intentions but they are elected into a position with little preperation. Often they were elected to oppose the very same people who they now work UNDER, the International. If the International can not sway them with the "thankless job" "apathetic membership speaches they isolate them and try to turn their members against them by sabotaging their efforts to serve the members. If that fails they simply remove them.

The fact is we need change. Accountability is only one of the things we need. We need a union that suites our needs, needs that are unique to our industry and our profession. No amount of reform would enable the TWU to meet those needs. Not for mechanics, not for any other TWU represented employees at AA. We need to form unions that can represent us though our entire career, regardless of employer.

We need to consolidate the labor movement in this industry. We should do so along class and craft lines. The pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are alreadypartially into the process, baggage handlers are just starting with the AGW. Five years from now there should only be five unions. One for pilots, one for flight attendants, one for mechanics, one for dispatchers and one for all other ground workers.

Those five unions should form an association that respects each unions autonomy. These would be unions that workers could identify with. It would be their union for their entire career. Each union would be capable of shutting down the entire industry if needed to protect its members and these unions would be accountable to their members. None of these unions would be tempted to trade away our pay and benifits for funding for AMTRACK or to kill rediculous unworkable legislation like S-1327.

The first step towards a better future that includes real unionism is to get rid of the TWU and get into industry specific, craft specific unions.

We need AMFA. Our other brothers and sister need the AGW.

Its kind of like growing up. Just because you move into different houses with different careers it does not mean that you are no longer brothers, it does not mean that you cant support each other. Think of the TWU as a terribly dysfuntional family with a horribly oppressive father (Sonny Hall), we cant kill him off but we can move out.

AMFA and the AGW today, for a better tomorrow.

 

[Jim Martin]

Bob,
I understand why we need to get rid of the TWU. I just think it is BS that the 2 sides play these games. It makes me wonder whether one is really better than the other.

I am glad you got all that off your chest though. Have a good one.