j7915 said:
Worldwide, Triangle. Odgen, Swissport, look for the lowest paid workers on the airport and you will find that they are TWU.
Sad but true.
And the longer we stay with the TWU the more we will continue to head down to where they are.
The TWU negotiates minimum wage contracts with little or no benifits then uses those same contracts to drive down wages at the major carriers.
The TWU is the worst thing to ever happen to airline workers.
The sad fact is that the TWU has dreams of being the sole airline union for airline ground workers. But, instead of doing it upfront through raids they operate like a thief in the night. Thier undemocratic structure alows them to screw over their own members. They give companies costs that are below non-union costs, essentially transferring HR costs to the members. The members essentially pay the company's HR costs through their dues.
The TWU plans on driving out it competitor unions within the AFL-CIO by undercuting their contracts and driving those other employers out of business. They do it this way because they know that any attempt at raiding ANY other union would be as successful as their drive to unionize Delta.
Its interesting to note that the TWU lost over $2million unsuccessfully trying to organize Delta while on the other hand its concessionary policy with AMR has paid huge dividends both directly to union officials and to the Treasury. Its seems that the adversarial approach is a bad business decision as far as the TWU International is concerned. They seemed to have forgotten that they are a UNION. It seems that they have abandoned organizing for members in favor of undercutting other unions to get them.
In 2001 I met with some of the IAM leaders from TWA. Ed LaClare, Sito Pantonja and some other person whose name I can not recall. I was told by them that after deregulation the unions of the AFL-CIO that represent ground workers discussed restructuring the airline labor movement to better serve the members under these drastically changed conditions. Of course the IAM, which at the time represented more airline workers than anyone else wanted the other unions to bow out graciously and allow them to have everybody. Needless to say, none of the other unions were about to walk away from the easy RLA guaranteed dues flow. Apparently around this time the TWU embarked on its quest to grow through concessions.
Basically the TWU has embarked on a new form of "union busting". Only in the end the members still pay dues. But as far as the company is concerned any of the goals that they would seek when trying to "Bust" a union are more easily and efficiently accomplished by having the TWU in place. They get to lower pay and benifits with impunity with the nice side benifit that the employees end up not resenting the company so much but the union. In a non-union workplace such corporate behavior would make it an easy target for organizing, with the TWU in place, companies dont have to worry about that. In turn the union has concocted an eloborate mechanism for shifting blame to powerless local leaders and even the members themselves. Perhaps that is the main reason why the AA/TWU has 22 locals instead of just two like SWA, one for ground workers and one for Flight attendants.
The biggest plus that the TWU offers employers is their AFL-CIO affiliation. While touted as a plus to the members its actually a plus to employers because once the TWU is in place they can drive down industry wages while being immune from well funded highly organized raids from other AFL-CIO unions. Instead all they have to do is fight off grass roots drives that lack the resources that are required to mount a nationwide drive.
For a corporation having the TWU in place is like having a protection contract against any potential raid from a well funded AFL-CIO union.
The TWU has successfully whipped up a frenzy within the AFL-CIO against AMFA. However its interesting to note that the other unions in the AFL-CIO have lost more of their members to the TWU than to AMFA over the years and that those members now earn less in real wages and benifits than they used to. In fact those m,embers now work under conditions that one would expect in a non-union workplace. One has to wonder how stupid those union officials are to support the TWU when the TWU has led the industry in concessions for over twenty years.
The fact is that wherever AMFA has gone wages and benifits have improved. Isnt that what unionism is all about?
While economic conditions have resulted in mass layoffs the fact is that even when unions like the TWU put massive concessions in place job loss still exist. This tactic of drastic wage cuts during downturns is one of the reasons why workers formed unions, instituted the seniority system and pushed for legislation to provide benifits for those who are displaced through layoffs. In other words our union provides none of the things that most workers expect from a union. The concept of "hey lets slash everything for five years and still lose thousands of jobs (while at the same time accepting illegal payments from the company)" is not a union concept, its a union busting concept. Its also a concept that the TWU has wholeheartedly embraced.
