You have agreed with the positions of most of the new officers on Team Peterson likLike I said, AMFA nor the IBT can change anything until the contract is up for early openers.
Yes and No There is an opportunity for changes that come with the merger with US. If the NEW AA finds that they cant attract, retain or motivate the talent with what they are offering they may as part of the merger agreement adjust compensation to a more competitive level, although the odds are long that things would get bad enough for management to admit that screwing your employees is not always the best way to run a service business it is possible and any change in the status quo is a cause for concern for them. They have watched 591 closely. A change in Representation could also prod the NEW AA into making a peace offering to a new Representative because they don't have them in their pockets, yet, and new representatives usually have promises to try and live up to.. Companies fear representational changes, (except in the twisted case of 591 they were probably hoping for change on the local level, they would have seen it as an endorsement of the Gless/Videtich TeAAm, they would have let out a sigh of relief). Carriers do not like when the membership chooses to change who represents them, in fact during the hearings on changing the voting requirements under the NMB both the rails and airlines cited that the new NMB rules could lead to more decertification elections and disruptions.
What I was saying in the begging of this post is in other words if the company suffers because they got what they wanted they may not want it anymore, if they are getting what they want then more than likely they will try and take away even more, or let inflation do it for them. They believe that they are paying you all you are worth, in fact they would probably like to take away even more. In reality the Unions bargaining position in a merger is even weaker than it is in BK because there is nothing stopping the company, which will be the biggest carrier in the industry from just sitting back and running under two of the most concessionary contracts that ever existed till 2018, thanks to you Overspeed.
So the question for the members is do we go in there as we have in the past with all the same appointed people who are treated very well by AA and do not have to live under the terms of the agreement conducting the "high level" negotiations and the elected people only allowed to participate in the mock "low level" negotiations that are purely show and only exist to try and get everyone to think their elected officials negotiated this deal? So far what the TWU has done with 591 is reduce the number of voices from Aircraft Maintenance on the Mock committee, this makes it easier for them to get an endorsement on another concessionary deal from the Negotiating committee. Where we had up to Eight representatives from Line locals we now have only two, our voices on the Committee have been cut by 75%. So 591 makes things worse not better for us.
So for the average member its do they wait and see if the International screws them again by cutting a deal in "Harmonization" (company term adopted by the appointed leadership) or do they try something else? Could we see our contract extended to 12 more years like Eagle had?
Those of us who were elected know what we are up against and we will do the best we can but the fact is that this was designed to fail (from the memberships point of view) by the ATD. So far it has not gone as they planned. They know what they did by not including Title II in the new Local, it was not an accident and even if they did include Title II we still have the problem of Appointed ATD officials having control over the Locals, they even wrote it into the Bylaws they imposed. 591 is what the members have for representation, they did not ask for it but its what the ATD decided to impose. We were elected by them to do the best we can to insure that their interests are represented but we have no illusions as to the intent. They may later add Title II, but that still does not fix the problem where Gary, Sam and Larry have to go through Videtich or Gless to deal with Parker. Where elected officials have to go through appointed ones.
Only 26% of the eligible voters bothered to vote. Guys I spoke to said the same thing as some have said here, Anything they get from the TWU goes straight into the garbage pail. They don't even look at it. TeAAm Videtich spent thousands of dollars on a mailer that very few even opened. The got 200 votes out of 4000, we didn't send out anything and received triple the votes TeAAm Videtich did.
Of that 4000 my guess is that well over 90% filled out cards for either the IBT or AMFA, many filled out both and would fill out ANY card for any union, even no union. TeAAm Videtich got around 5% of the eligible vote, one has to wonder did some people vote for them in hopes they would win and thus help drive more cards being signed?
Negotiations have been taking place, both to finish up the last deal and to work on the merged work groups, something that could very likely result in anything but "Harmonization". So far the Locals have been excluded from the process, they had no say on the 3.5% increase in exchange for Profit Sharing, neither did the members, Profit sharing does not increase fixed costs, we only get it if the company is profitable, so now if the company makes more profits than the rest of the industry combined our compensation will remain exactly where it would be if they lost money, what a way to motivate!! I believe that they really expected to have their boys in place, just goes to show how out of touch you and the ATD are with the membership.
The fact is the ATD was given a chance back in 2004, what have they done to make things better for the membership since then?