Not saying this is does not exist, but I have not seen it or even heard about it until now.
Oh it exists, I have a copy of it. Have pictures of cases of them in one of the Union Offices as well. Apparently they have thousands of copies.
Its an unsigned letter that accuses me of inconsistancies. What they did was, such as in the very first example, take a statement they claim I wrote (not denying it, I didnt bother to verify) back in 2007 when AA was asking for pension relief so they could put less money in the pension and still claim it was "fully funded" . They pulled out one sentence where they claim I wrote "The pension threat is a scam" and left out the rest of the 5 year old discussion or what it was about. I believe I also wrote back then if we allow them to defer payments to a later date that the liability would increase and make it more likely that down the road the company would seek to terminate the pensions or use the increased liability as leverage against pay raises. But they left that part out, and then compared that statement to a post a year later where they claim I wrote "The airlines that went through BK switched to 401K matches, so they may not be getting promised as much but since the money is there they will likely be getting what they were promised". Out of that they came up with this;
"In 2007, he said losing the pension was a scam and now he concedes that if you may lose the pension in BK, but you at least get a 401(k) match,. So is losing the pension or a scam?
Two different convesations a year apart about two different things. One was about the government allowing AA to legally underfund our pensions,(while claiming they were fully funded), and I did discuss the danger of them building up a huge liability this way, while enjoying the real time savings from the things we gave up such as Holidays, Vacations and sick time to pay for it, and them using that against us later, which they have. The other was a comparision between a DB and DC plan that our peers who went BK ended up with.
I'm not going through the rest of the 21 pages but that was the first one there, the rest is the same.
If I were a 514 member I would object to the Local using resources to put stuff like this out. I would be quite embarrassed. Poorly edited, no name, poor easy to dismiss accusations with grade school grammar and logic. One would think with millions in the Treasury they could do better than that.
If the leadership of 514 wants to mount an attack upon me fine, its not the first time (in 2003 they took out an ad in a New York Labor paper -The Chief-calling Chuck Schalk and I "the enemies of labor", but at least that was signed and well edited), this is the political arena which I chose to step into, if my skin isnt thick enough I should step down, but for a Local that size, with those resources to put out something like this anonomously is really pathetic. "Man up" and put your name and Local header on it at least!!!
