Teamster Organizer caught forging Authorization Cards
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You know there o'spin your arguements are the perfect example that mechanics would really be better off with no union at all. The iam,twu and reamsters have been a total disaster for the AMT. As you pointed out AMFA has its faults also and I was ex NW and lost 17 yrs I had there. AMFA made mistakes no doubt but I also know it wasn't all AMFA's fault. In addition AMFA did raise the bar for AMT's that still exsists today as far as wages. Without the NW AMFA contract in 2000. We AMT's today would be making between 25 and 30 dollars an hour and no more. When AMFA took over from the iam our retirement was 42 dollars per yr of service. Thats pathetic. AMFA raised that to 85 in the first contract. Still not the best but a hell of a lot better. I am non union and make 49.25 an hr. Jetblue is non union and even pays its AMT's significantly better then AA. So you tell us O'spin why in the hell on gods green earth would the AA mechanics continue to not only take these crap contracts that keep getting negotiated but to pay dues to the twu for the pleasure! I just don't know how much more abuse the AA guys wanna continue to take before they say uncle...AMFA or no union. Unfortuately those are the only two real choices out there.
The NWA FAs did go for it, IIRC they backed off when they got an Equity stake worth 93% of what they agreed to give up. (they agreed to $195 million in concessions and got $181 million in equity, we gave another $2.2 billion on top of the $3 plus billion we gave from 2003 to 2012 and got an equity stake worth at best $400 million or less than 10% of what we gave up)
We went in 8 years after giving up 25% with our wages already at the bottom of the industry and agreed to an equity stake that was only worth at most 25cents on the dollar compared to what we gave in additional concessions beyond what we gave up in 2003.
In court the companies lawyers claimed that with the profits they expect as a result of reorganizing we would get back everything we gave up, so what did we do? We gave it back in exchange for 3.5% for mechanics and 4.3% for Fleet.
Airline workers are the only workers who are told they cant strike upon abrogation of our contracts, every other worker in this country can, if Unions wont defend our right to strike then what do we need them for? Believe it or not Unions aren't supposed to be a place for kiss asses to escape to and get six figure salaries while telling the members to give the company everything they want or risk losing their jobs.
But its OK when they closed MCI and half of AFW and before this contract is up, Tulsa, its ok when in addition to agreeing to go from 18000 mechanics to just over 6000 we also agree to have less vacation, less holidays and less sick time and lower wages than non-union.
6325 by 2017. 1500 in Title II, 3600 in Line Maint, 500 in AFW, that leaves just 700 between Tulsa and DWH.
You don't know squat about the NWA AMFA strike except for some slanted articles, and sound bites you may have read or heard. I had a brother at NWA back then - he lost his job. To this day, he doesn't complain about AMFA. Point is, if you actually knew what went down, and the reasons why - you would shut your pie hole on the subject.
There you are running your mouth about the Alaska Air AMTs. Funny, you don't see them bitching about their representation either.
As Far as UAL goes, I see where there is a good bit of buyers remorse for going Teamsters there - as indicated on the UAL threads.
NWA wanted paycuts from their mechanics like AA got from the TWU two years prior, and agree to cut the headcount in half, but they stood their ground, it cost them their jobs but they started over. We agreed to terms that cut us from 18000 to 11500 and then not only extended all the concessions from 2003 till 2018 but also agreed to terms that will cut us down to just 6325 by 2017 along with our pension and retiree medical. We caved. We will see our headcount cut by 2/3rds and massive concessions including concessions that NWA wasn't even asking for. Who ended up better off, guys who kept full pay till the last day and started over like Lineguy43, now earning more than ever, or us, who keep slipping further and further behind as our overpriced medical and inflation eat away at whats left of our disgraceful compensation?
Note, When the AFA cashed out the equity claim in 2007 they netted around 65 cents on the dollar.
Flying low
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You keep telling us how many position have been lost under AMFA's watch. Can YOU tell us how many TWU positions have been and will be lost under the TWU watch?
I know the numbers that Bob posts, but I'd like to know what your numbers are.
The numbers I'm posting were made public info through the lawsuit that the Locals initiated to stop them from imposing 591 on us. They had collected info from the company to get the IEC to buy off on revoking the Charters of five locals that had not violated the Constitution. In their graphs they cited that we are going from 18000 in M&R to just over 6000 by 2017. They cited the need to take immediate action based upon the fact that OH was to be cut by 50%. They were aware of this when they told Tulsa they had to vote this deal in, they told them it would save 4500 jobs when the fact is that AA didn't have anywhere to send the work so 4500 jobs were not at immediate risk, however they voted in terms that would allow the company to eliminate over 5000 jobs and do so at the companies leisure.
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Was this before or after the announcement of the merger?
Thanks Bob for negotiating our contract you so elegantly point out!! Was your intentions to negotiate so you can continue your quest for Amfa to get in? Seems to me this is your ultimate goal? It surely isn’t to represent the membership during an arbitration case?
In Solidarity,
CIO
Thanks Bob for negotiating our contract you so elegantly point out!! Was your intentions to negotiate so you can continue your quest for Amfa to get in? Seems to me this is your ultimate goal? It surely isn’t to represent the membership during an arbitration case?
In Solidarity,
CIO
Chuck Schalk
Veteran
- Nov 17, 2006
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Really Overspin, read this and all will understand how unionism chose to fail due to self interests and not what was good for the industry as a whole.
Lets not forget the job fair the TWU held in Tulsa while the NWA strike was on......explain that union brother of one!
[font="Arial""]From[/font][font="Arial""]AMFA NWA strike, what really happened..... [/font][font="Times New Roman""][/font]
[font="Arial""]Posted 19 August 2012- 06:27 AM[/font]
[font="Arial""]Previously posted by Boomer with some additions.[/font]
[font="Arial""]Peter J. Rachleff[/font][font="Arial""] is professor of History at [/font][font="Arial""]Macalester College[/font][font="Arial""] in the [/font][font="Arial""]USA[/font][font="Arial""]. He is the author of internationally recognized academic books.
EDUCATION: B.A., Amherst College M.A., Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Peter Rachleff teaches labor history at Macalester College in St. Paul. He is currently involved with the Twin Cities Northwest Workers Labor Solidarity Committee. He was the chairperson of the Twin Cities Local P-9 Support Committee during the Hormel strike of 1985-86 and is the author of Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Hormel Strike and The Future of the Labor Movement.[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://works.bepress.com/peter_rachleff/[/font]
[font="Arial""]Comments from Peter Rachleff on the NWA AMFA Strike:[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://www.kclabor.org/strike_at_northwest_airlines.htm[/font]
[font="Arial""]The IAM has excoriated AMFA as “raiders” and “elitists,” and they have, so far, convinced the AFL-CIO to withhold its support and to encourage its affiliates to do the same.[/font]
[font="Arial""]Interestingly, in the midst of this process, the IAM used its influence with the National Mediation Board (this was during the Clinton administration) to get the bargaining unit redrawn to include the custodians and cleaners in AMFA’s jurisdiction. They were hoping that these workers, who had not been courted by AMFA’s advocates, would vote to stay with the IAM and thereby defeat the reaffiliation. But AMFA won the 1999 representation election hands down and went on to negotiate a contract that brought substantial (20% and more) wage increases to workers whose wages had stagnated for more than a decade.
When 10,000 mechanics, cleaners, and custodians elected AMFA to represent their interests and 14,000 flight attendants elected PFAA, NWA refused to give them seats on the board. They continued to treat the IAM and the Teamsters as if they still represented the very workers who had voted them out, and they still sit there.
The IAM and the AFL-CIO have been overtly hostile. The IAM not only ordered its members to cross AMFA’s picket lines (they threatened to replace the president of Local 1833 and trustee the local if he did not cross), but it also negotiated with NWA to “take back” work, such as the pushing back of airplanes, which had been “theirs” before the 1999 redrawing of the bargaining units.
Rick Banks, director of the AFL-CIO's "Collective Bargaining Department," privately ordered all state labor federations, city central labor bodies, and affiliates to deny AMFA strikers food, money, or other forms of material support, or advocating a boycott of NWA. Leaders of central labor bodies in the Twin Cities moved quickly to discourage affiliated unions from offering support, speaking at rallies, or welcoming AMFA speakers at their meetings.[/font]
[font="Arial""]AMFA had inherited a contract negotiated by the IAM which included no language limiting "farming out." In their first contract[/font][font="Arial""], they reached a "compromise" figure of 38%, which NWA wanted to raise to 53% in their current proposal. (can we put this bed finally, it was not AMFA)[/font]
[font="Arial""]Unity of action has been effectively blocked for decades, despite legal access to the right to sympathy strike. Unions have been pitted against each other at the bargaining table, even more so in the concessionary environment of the past decade.
The larger labor "movement" has not provided effective mechanisms (e.g. the AFL-CIO's "Transportation Trades Department") to bring unions together. Unions have been largely left on their own for better or, more often, for worse (AMFA has always strived for one union/one voice)
The IAM has excoriated AMFA as "raiders" and "elitists," and have so far convinced the AFL-CIO to withhold its support and to encourage its affiliates to do the same.
When the mechanics, cleaners, custodians, baggage handlers, ticket agents and white collar office workers said "No," their union, the International Association of Machinists District 143, insisted that they vote, revote and re-revote (what is "democracy" the third time over?) on the same package. As voter turnout plummeted, the concessionary contract was finally ratified. (sound familiar to TWU?)[/font]
[font="Arial""]AMFA also instituted internal union practices which cemented the members' allegiance. Its locals have no bureaucracy, no full-time officers; AMFA officers wear the same overalls and work the same jobs as the women and men they represent.[/font]
[font="Arial""]AMFA's practice of collective bargaining also allows for an open door to rank-and-file observers. Despite fierce protests from corporate management, any member who wishes to watch a bargaining session is welcome to attend[/font]
[font="Arial""]Shortly after the NWA mechanics defected to AMFA, frustrated flight attendants launched their own campaign to withdraw from the Teamsters and start their own independent union, modeled after AMFA, called the Professional Flight Attendants Association. When Hoffa responded by placing Local 2000 under trusteeship he pretty much guaranteed that the Teamsters would lose the election, which they did.[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://www.fightbacknews.org/2005/04/afscmeamfa.htm[/font]
[font="Arial""]They hate AMFA because AMFA is independent and has grown by ‘raiding’ AFL-CIO unions, particularly units represented by the International Association of Machinists (IAM). The Northwest mechanics used to be IAM members but voted in 2000 to switch to AMFA. The IAM officials have bitterly attacked them ever since. It’s true that AMFA made their appeal to the mechanics on a narrow craft basis tinged with elitism. But it’s also true that the workers had good reasons to throw the former IAM leadership out.[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/853/amfa.html[/font]
[font="Arial""]AMFA members don’t lack determination, but they can’t win alone!What’s needed first of all is for AMFA to call on the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) and the Professional Flight Attendants Association (PFAA) to stop scabbing and join the picket lines. There are already individuals fighting within those unions to do the right thing. Addressing a strike support rally in Minneapolis on August 27, Peggy Lubinski, who was fired for honoring AMFA picket lines, told her fellow flight attendants: “You need to walk!” An IAM baggage handler walking the picket line in Detroit told WV that he had been fighting for his union to stop scabbing.
Today the union tops are brazen in their backstabbing. IAM general vice president Robert Roach responded to AMFA’s request for solidarity from IAM ramp workers and customer service agents: “IAM members will not be duped into standing with AMFA.” The IAM local president in Detroit tried to put a spin on the scabbing by claiming it was better for his union to do the scab work than have an outside contractor do it!
Trying to justify such strikebreaking, the national AFL-CIO organizing director labeled AMFA a “renegade, raiding organization that is creating havoc in the airline industry,” adding, “It’s not in the house of labor.” It was the IAM misleaders’ pattern of agreeing to concession after concession that convinced mechanics at a number of carriers to leave the IAM for AMFA. [/font]
[font="Arial""]http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2005/09/amfa-strike.html[/font]
[font="Arial""]Questioned about AMFA’s requests for support, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff attacked the union shortly before the strike as a “renegade, raiding organization” and said AMFA and its more than 10,000 members are “not in the house of labor.”
The Machinists union, which represents gate agents and other ground crew workers at Northwest, holds a grudge against AMFA, which has gained most of its members by decertifying IAM units. Northwest mechanics and cleaners left the IAM for AMFA in 1997.
IAM Vice President Robert Roach has said, “IAM members will not be duped into standing with AMFA.”[/font]
[font="Arial""]Some IAM members have not only been crossing the lines, but also taking on AMFA members’ work. “To cross a picket line is bad enough,” said Yubian, “but crossing a picket line to do struck work—you shouldn’t even be in a union.”[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://libcom.org/library/the-2005-northwest-airlines-strike[/font]
[font="Arial""]AFL-CIO Treachery[/font]
[font="Arial""]AMFA is not affiliated to the AFL-CIO. Apparently still smarting from the workers exodus from the IAM, the federation did all it could to undermine AMFA during the strike. The AFL actually sent a letter to every metro labor council in the country ordering the unions to refuse any support to AMFA. This had a very chilling effect on solidarity efforts. In concrete terms it meant that even raising simple motions for a donation at your local union’s meeting would be opposed by most union officials. It meant that no wider mobilizations of official labor solidarity would be possible. It created a huge obstacle to reaching the constituency that would be most naturally supportive of AMFA’s struggle[/font][font="Arial""].[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://www.socialistaction.org/pollack5.htm[/font]
[font="Arial""]Northwest exploits divisions in labor [/font]
[font="Arial""]From the beginning of the strike, officials of other unions—from the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and Air Line Pilots’ Association (ALPA) at Northwest, to the heads of the AFL-CIO—have denied AMFA support, claiming it was a breakaway union that had raided IAM locals.
It’s not surprising that IAM officials showed no support for AMFA strikers. Unfortunately, they tried to cover their backstabbing with misrepresentations of AMFA’s bargaining approach, claiming—incorrectly—that AMFA was trying to shift portions of the billions in cuts the bosses wanted onto other unions on the property. [/font][font="Arial""]But in fact, AMFA repeatedly pointed out how all unions were in the fight togethe[/font][font="Arial""]r, and AMFA negotiator Jeff Mathews warned that“some groups, including the IAM, may be asked to shoulder a disproportionately larger share of the new target amount.”[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/nwa-a23.shtml[/font]
[font="Arial""]Northwest owes whatever“success” it has achieved largely to the betrayal carried out by the trade union bureaucracy. [/font][font="Arial""]The airline has been able to continue its operations only because of decisions by the Air Line Pilots Association and the International Association of Machinists, both member unions of the AFL-CIO, to cross picket lines. [/font][font="Arial""]The Professional Flight Attendants Association (PFAA), which like the AMFA is an independent union, has also decided to continue work.[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://www.mltranslations.org/Us/ROL/ROLaflcio.htm[/font][font="Times New Roman""][/font]
[font="Arial""]No Labor Solidarity for Northwest Airline Mechanics[/font][font="Arial""][/font]
[font="Arial""]Those who claim to want to rebuild the labor movement within the newly formed CTW coalition as well as those who remained in the AFL-CIO have flunked an early test.
On August 20[sup]th[/sup], less than one month after the AFL-CIO "split", 4,400 mechanics, represented by AMFA (Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association), went on strike against Northwest Airlines, refusing to accept massive concessions and job reductions as so many other airline unions have done. AMFA is an association built on the raiding of other unions, particularly the International Association of Machinists
For whatever reason, AMFA has followed through with a commitment to resist concessions. The AMFA airline mechanics at Northwest took a stand to stop the floodgates of massive concessions plaguing airline workers from mechanics to pilots, from flight attendants to reservationists. [/font]
[font="Arial""]Northwest Airlines has a well developed plan to break the union and the Bush Administration acceded to the request by Northwest not to invoke emergency provisions as is usually done (against the workers) in airline disputes[/font][font="Arial""]. In an article from the Christian Science Monitor entitled "Why Big Labor hasn’t aided striking machinists," staff writer Alexander Marks accurately surmises that, [/font][font="Arial""]"If Northwest rides out the strike and succeeds in breaking the union, it could be a watershed in the history of the American labor movemen[/font][font="Arial""]t, many analysts say -- a key event in a long string of setbacks that have weakened the role of organized workers as a political and social force in the country".
The article continues, "[/font][font="Arial""]Some labor experts go so far as to infer that Northwest isn’t alone in wanting to break AMFA, speculating that Big Labor,[/font][font="Arial""] which has not come to AMFA’s aid would not shed too many tears if it fell. As a result, they say, the strike was lost before it began. ‘This is payback time for AMFA. That’s the way the labor movement is looking at it, says Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations … raiding is a sin, and AMFA raided and won [by] saying it would never accept concessions. [/font][font="Arial""]It’ll be much easier for other unions to tell members that they must accept concessions if AMFA was killed for not doing it’." [/font]
[font="Arial""]While such bourgeois analysts understand what is at stake for the workers, a shameless and clueless AFL-CIO representative is quoted in the same article as saying, "I don’t think this will have wider implications because of the nature of this particular organization."
No sooner were these words spoken than the initial company victory in the Northwest strike opened the floodgates for an aggressive corporate drive against the US workers and their unions. (this is what scabbing AMFA’s work,helping the company and not supporting the NWA strike got everyone)Northwest has gone after the rest of their workforce demanding massive concessions from flight attendants, ramp service workers, and pilots. Delphi, the largest automobile parts maker, declared bankruptcy. Holding up the example of the Northwest mechanics, Delphi’s CEO warned the UAW workers not to strike. Delphi is demanding a wage cut from $25.00 to $9.00 per hour and a similar reduction in benefits. Now General Motors is wresting massive concessions from the UAW amounting to $15 Billion in savings on health care costs. The pundits of Wall Street gleefully reported in a lead editorial ("Rip Van UAW") in the Wall Street Journal of October 18, 2005, "Two cheers for the United Auto Workers Union … this is a watershed concession by the American industrial workforce in the middle of a contract that doesn’t expire until 2007…"[/font]
[font="Arial""]if other airline unions had honored the Northwest mechanics picket lines, the strike could have been won. Instead, the strike is essentially lost, and the US monopoly capitalist class was the victor. Unions in both the AFL-CIO and the CTW Coalition represent airline workers. Both consciously refused to stand in solidarity with the mechanics and both share responsibility for the labor setback that is occurring now[/font][font="Arial""]. The PATCO history is repeated. Stern of the CTW motion is right that the labor movement must be rebuilt, but union solidarity is the best place to start. He and the CTW leadership as well as the AFL-CIO leaders miserably failed "Labor Solidarity 101".[/font]
[font="Arial""]http://atwonline.com/operations-maintenance/news/northwest-moving-forward-strike-contingency-plans-0309[/font]
[font="Arial""]"We are virtually the last airline to have fully licensed A&P mechanics driving pushback tractors and we're also virtually the last airline to have its own cleaners," Steenland said. Senior cleaners, including benefits and pensions, "cost the company approximately $65,000 per year per employee."
The Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association is, like the PFAA, not affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Six years ago, the Northwest mechanics, who were then members of the IAM along with baggage handlers and other ground employees, left the IAM and formed their own unit of AMFA. Now the IAM has reportedly agreed to allow some of its members to perform tasks normally done by striking airplane cleaners who are members of AMFA.[/font][font="Times New Roman""][/font]
scorpion 2
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