Negotiations........why?
- Thread starter Chuck Schalk
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Kev3188
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As noted earlier, posters on the site he ran were talking explicitly about job actions. Can't remember if it was AA or UA (I don't think it was both?) sued for IP addresses.Rogallo said:
NW also had the PCs of several union officers seized under the same sort of deal.
WeAAsles
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- Oct 20, 2007
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By Martha Brannigan
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Dec. 13 — When Delta Air Lines started its Wired Workforce project to help every employee get a home computer earlier this year, it didn’t expect this: “Stick with the rest of us. Be unified ... ‘No Overtime, No Excuses,’ ” read a posting by Charles Sargent on the password-protected online bulletin board operated by the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Delta’s 9,800 pilots.
“IT IS YOUR and my contractual right to NOT fly overtime,” said a message from another Delta pilot.
Atlanta-based Delta cited dozens of online postings like these when it sought a federal restraining order to force ALPA and its pilots to halt what the airline alleges is a concerted campaign to refuse overtime. The carrier, which relies on overtime to keep its planes in the air, has canceled hundreds of flights, and it’s paring its schedule for the rest of this month and next by about 5 percent. On Monday, a federal judge denied the restraining order. Delta has filed an appeal.
But something else is at stake in the court battle. While the nation’s biggest airlines have been struggling with work slowdowns, the Web has become the medium of choice for airline workers to grouse about work and plan job actions. Now, airline workers are discovering the Internet can be a double-edged sword as management monitors their postings and even uses them as court exhibits to prove illegal activity.
ALPA acknowledges that many pilots are declining extra hours, but it insists that the union isn’t behind the effort and has even actively opposed it, posting online messages of its own.
In an e-mail message, Capt. Sargent, an Atlanta-based pilot, declines to comment, citing “the sensitivity of the current situation.” He was among 49 individual pilots named by Delta in its motion for the order.
Delta isn’t alone in battling action plans developed by its employees over the Internet. In November, UAL Corp.’s United Airlines obtained a court order barring its mechanics from illegal job actions that it alleges were orchestrated in part over the Web.
Northwest Airlines recently cited a posting on a Web site operated by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association to complain to a federal judge that the union wasn’t fully abiding by a court order barring a slowdown by the mechanics.
All three carriers are in the midst of labor-contract negotiations, but they haven’t yet reached the stage at which job actions are permitted under the Railway Labor Act, which was designed to prevent interruptions of public transportation and commerce. As a result, any “concerted” effort to change the “status quo” is illegal. Delta, for example, contends that postings discouraging overtime flying are just the kind of activity prohibited by the act.
The workers’ use of the Web, and the responses of management, raise legal and workplace questions, from privacy to free speech. “It’s a great tool for organizing, but also [a tool] for management to listen in a way people may not be aware of,” says Alan Davidson, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “It’s troubling particularly because people don’t know the rules of the road.” While some of the sites require passwords, management has been able to monitor the contents, in part by reading postings downloaded from the sites by employees who oppose the job actions.
Two days before Thanksgiving, United delivered an ultimatum to Dennis Sanderson, a mechanic who runs an antimanagement Web site called The-Mechanic.com: Either “clean up” the site by purging all the bulletin-board postings the airline identified as encouraging mechanics to continue a slowdown, or face contempt-of-court proceedings over whether the site had violated a temporary restraining order, United’s attorney said in a letter.
“I took the bulletin board down and started a fresh one to keep from having to go to court,” says Mr. Sanderson, of Centerville, Va. Now, he says, he edits co-workers’ remarks. “I don’t post anything some corporate lawyer might interpret as advocating an illegal job action,” he says. “I guess you could call it a chilling effect. ... Do you know how much money you’re talking to take on United Airlines in a First Amendment suit?”
United also subpoenaed records of Mr. Sanderson’s site in a quest to identify participants who are listed only by nicknames like “Brokenwrench” and “THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.” The subpoena also compelled Mr. Sanderson to turn over any information tying his site to two unions that are vying for United mechanics’ support.
Last Wednesday, in response to the subpoena, Mr. Sanderson gave United lawyers a CD-ROM copy of his computer records, including the names of three people he says sent him e-mail identifying themselves after the commotion over the site began. “At that point in time, I had no choice,” he says. “I had to hand it over.”
Meanwhile, Delta filed another suit in federal court in Atlanta last week trying to discover who posted the flight schedules of some Delta pilots on a public Web site. The airline calls the posting an attempt to harass and intimidate those who aren’t supporting the no-overtime effort.
The suit names “John Does 1 through 10, and Jane Roes 1 through 10,” and seeks a court order to shut down the site, which could be reached by hyperlink from a Geocities.com site called “The Pilots Underground.” Soon after Delta filed its complaint, the hyperlink became inoperable. Within days, the Geocities.com site itself went dark, leaving only a posting that urges pilots to support their union leader.
Labor hasn’t given up on old-fashioned tactics. Some Delta pilots’ schedules have also been posted on traditional bulletin boards in pilots’ lounges in an attempt to publicize the names of pilots still flying overtime. One Delta pilot who had filed a “greenslip,” or request for overtime, complained to management after receiving an unsigned threat: “Dear Mr. GREEDSLIP, Does your wife know about the s—- from CVG? One more, she will,” warns the three-lined typed message, a copy of which Delta filed with its federal lawsuit.
Advertisement
ALPA’s professional standards committee has recently begun to investigate complaints of pilot harassment, which have included the theft of pilots’ flight kits (thus forcing pilots to cancel trips) and nasty messages in pilots’ mailboxes. In a letter to pilots last Thursday, ALPA said it hasn’t encouraged or condoned such actions, adding that such activity “also causes the vast majority of pilots who are also disgusted with this type of behavior to question the union.”
The online labor battles raise questions about whether and when a Web site operator is responsible for the content. ALPA says its online forum is a place for pilots to exchange views and doesn’t necessarily express the union’s stance. ALPA has said repeatedly — on the Web site and elsewhere — that it doesn’t support the no-overtime campaign by pilots, but it hasn’t removed any postings about the overtime issue. “Our policy is to only monitor for slander and profanity,” says ALPA spokeswoman Karen Miller. “They’re going to talk to each other whether it’s in the forum or in the crew lounges.”
By contrast, Bill Bailey, president of AMFA Local 35, which represents Northwest mechanics in Duluth, Minn., says his union doesn’t have a bulletin board on its site for fear the union will be blamed by management for inflammatory content. “They’ve got enough weapons,” says Mr. Bailey, noting that the company has accounted for many of the recent hits on the union’s Web site.
Minneapolis-based Northwest is no newcomer to Web-based labor battles. Earlier this year, it obtained a court order to copy the hard drives of flight attendants as it tried to prove that the group was conducting an illegal job action.
When Northwest recently forced AMFA to post a court order on its site, the Webmaster of Local 35 listed it as “Stupid TRO Notice,” prompting the airline to accuse it of contempt of court. The union removed the comment and admonished its Webmaster.
Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Dec. 13 — When Delta Air Lines started its Wired Workforce project to help every employee get a home computer earlier this year, it didn’t expect this: “Stick with the rest of us. Be unified ... ‘No Overtime, No Excuses,’ ” read a posting by Charles Sargent on the password-protected online bulletin board operated by the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Delta’s 9,800 pilots.
“IT IS YOUR and my contractual right to NOT fly overtime,” said a message from another Delta pilot.
Atlanta-based Delta cited dozens of online postings like these when it sought a federal restraining order to force ALPA and its pilots to halt what the airline alleges is a concerted campaign to refuse overtime. The carrier, which relies on overtime to keep its planes in the air, has canceled hundreds of flights, and it’s paring its schedule for the rest of this month and next by about 5 percent. On Monday, a federal judge denied the restraining order. Delta has filed an appeal.
But something else is at stake in the court battle. While the nation’s biggest airlines have been struggling with work slowdowns, the Web has become the medium of choice for airline workers to grouse about work and plan job actions. Now, airline workers are discovering the Internet can be a double-edged sword as management monitors their postings and even uses them as court exhibits to prove illegal activity.
ALPA acknowledges that many pilots are declining extra hours, but it insists that the union isn’t behind the effort and has even actively opposed it, posting online messages of its own.
In an e-mail message, Capt. Sargent, an Atlanta-based pilot, declines to comment, citing “the sensitivity of the current situation.” He was among 49 individual pilots named by Delta in its motion for the order.
Delta isn’t alone in battling action plans developed by its employees over the Internet. In November, UAL Corp.’s United Airlines obtained a court order barring its mechanics from illegal job actions that it alleges were orchestrated in part over the Web.
Northwest Airlines recently cited a posting on a Web site operated by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association to complain to a federal judge that the union wasn’t fully abiding by a court order barring a slowdown by the mechanics.
All three carriers are in the midst of labor-contract negotiations, but they haven’t yet reached the stage at which job actions are permitted under the Railway Labor Act, which was designed to prevent interruptions of public transportation and commerce. As a result, any “concerted” effort to change the “status quo” is illegal. Delta, for example, contends that postings discouraging overtime flying are just the kind of activity prohibited by the act.
The workers’ use of the Web, and the responses of management, raise legal and workplace questions, from privacy to free speech. “It’s a great tool for organizing, but also [a tool] for management to listen in a way people may not be aware of,” says Alan Davidson, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “It’s troubling particularly because people don’t know the rules of the road.” While some of the sites require passwords, management has been able to monitor the contents, in part by reading postings downloaded from the sites by employees who oppose the job actions.
Two days before Thanksgiving, United delivered an ultimatum to Dennis Sanderson, a mechanic who runs an antimanagement Web site called The-Mechanic.com: Either “clean up” the site by purging all the bulletin-board postings the airline identified as encouraging mechanics to continue a slowdown, or face contempt-of-court proceedings over whether the site had violated a temporary restraining order, United’s attorney said in a letter.
“I took the bulletin board down and started a fresh one to keep from having to go to court,” says Mr. Sanderson, of Centerville, Va. Now, he says, he edits co-workers’ remarks. “I don’t post anything some corporate lawyer might interpret as advocating an illegal job action,” he says. “I guess you could call it a chilling effect. ... Do you know how much money you’re talking to take on United Airlines in a First Amendment suit?”
United also subpoenaed records of Mr. Sanderson’s site in a quest to identify participants who are listed only by nicknames like “Brokenwrench” and “THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.” The subpoena also compelled Mr. Sanderson to turn over any information tying his site to two unions that are vying for United mechanics’ support.
Last Wednesday, in response to the subpoena, Mr. Sanderson gave United lawyers a CD-ROM copy of his computer records, including the names of three people he says sent him e-mail identifying themselves after the commotion over the site began. “At that point in time, I had no choice,” he says. “I had to hand it over.”
Meanwhile, Delta filed another suit in federal court in Atlanta last week trying to discover who posted the flight schedules of some Delta pilots on a public Web site. The airline calls the posting an attempt to harass and intimidate those who aren’t supporting the no-overtime effort.
The suit names “John Does 1 through 10, and Jane Roes 1 through 10,” and seeks a court order to shut down the site, which could be reached by hyperlink from a Geocities.com site called “The Pilots Underground.” Soon after Delta filed its complaint, the hyperlink became inoperable. Within days, the Geocities.com site itself went dark, leaving only a posting that urges pilots to support their union leader.
Labor hasn’t given up on old-fashioned tactics. Some Delta pilots’ schedules have also been posted on traditional bulletin boards in pilots’ lounges in an attempt to publicize the names of pilots still flying overtime. One Delta pilot who had filed a “greenslip,” or request for overtime, complained to management after receiving an unsigned threat: “Dear Mr. GREEDSLIP, Does your wife know about the s—- from CVG? One more, she will,” warns the three-lined typed message, a copy of which Delta filed with its federal lawsuit.
Advertisement
ALPA’s professional standards committee has recently begun to investigate complaints of pilot harassment, which have included the theft of pilots’ flight kits (thus forcing pilots to cancel trips) and nasty messages in pilots’ mailboxes. In a letter to pilots last Thursday, ALPA said it hasn’t encouraged or condoned such actions, adding that such activity “also causes the vast majority of pilots who are also disgusted with this type of behavior to question the union.”
The online labor battles raise questions about whether and when a Web site operator is responsible for the content. ALPA says its online forum is a place for pilots to exchange views and doesn’t necessarily express the union’s stance. ALPA has said repeatedly — on the Web site and elsewhere — that it doesn’t support the no-overtime campaign by pilots, but it hasn’t removed any postings about the overtime issue. “Our policy is to only monitor for slander and profanity,” says ALPA spokeswoman Karen Miller. “They’re going to talk to each other whether it’s in the forum or in the crew lounges.”
By contrast, Bill Bailey, president of AMFA Local 35, which represents Northwest mechanics in Duluth, Minn., says his union doesn’t have a bulletin board on its site for fear the union will be blamed by management for inflammatory content. “They’ve got enough weapons,” says Mr. Bailey, noting that the company has accounted for many of the recent hits on the union’s Web site.
Minneapolis-based Northwest is no newcomer to Web-based labor battles. Earlier this year, it obtained a court order to copy the hard drives of flight attendants as it tried to prove that the group was conducting an illegal job action.
When Northwest recently forced AMFA to post a court order on its site, the Webmaster of Local 35 listed it as “Stupid TRO Notice,” prompting the airline to accuse it of contempt of court. The union removed the comment and admonished its Webmaster.
Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
No no Im a firm believer if the lifeboat is sinking a few have to be thrown over to save the whole and yes you are correct the IAM/TWU is a business first. My point was if our pay (7% over DL) has already been established ,barring infighting at the ASS the negotiations should take months not yearsAMFAinMIAMI said:
AMFAinMIAMI
Veteran
Albert said:
Albert
What you need to understand it is NOT about the raises we might get, its about the amount of other stuff that has been taken away, Holidays, sick time, vacation,O/T rules, C/S policy and the rest, scope, 401k vs IAMNPF. crew cheif time, so you see it will be either poorly thought out or a long time before we get a JCBA.
Parker will play them and the result will be a bs contract, This is not the time to rush this, the future for you and the others who will be here for the next 10 yrs is at risk.
AMFAinMIAMI
Veteran
1AA said:
1AA
Until the company opens up or approaches to open this is just posturing by the two unions.
We have two contracts and AA is in no rush to give you a new deal unless they benifit some how.
AA has said delta +7% but that is life of new deal not a lump sum at signing.
I think what you will see is Delta top pay plus 7% and then you add your premiums licenses. longevity .... as far as sick days, holidays and overtime rates you take the best from both contracts as a base but start by asking for everything back . I think for the first time since Ive been here the company is ready to talk and wants to get it doneAMFAinMIAMI said:
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