local 12 proud said:
so bob if i understand this right, the local 514 president was given a premium kickback because it is a known fact that tulsa has always carried the vote! <_<
I was told that this whole thing about the seperate Locals and the company paying the Presidents all came at the same time.
Instead of realigning the locals they simply made more locals. This meant that there would be smaller locals, small locals always have financial troubles. So the 40 hours was no doubt a "payoff" of sorts to get the locals to accept the seperate Locals and to help the seperate locals survive. How it fits in with the company picking up the tab is where it really gets strange.
I was told, to his credit, that Dennis Burchette voiced concern about having the company pay the Presidents. I was told that he said something to the effect of "How would it look to the members that their President is getting paid by the company".
However, his concern was apparently short lived.
Now what we have to consider is, why would the company agree to pick up the tab? Why would they agree to give financial support to enable the TWU to form the seperate Locals?
Well an obvious reason could be that the company was quite happy with the TWU and they may have figured the $3 million per year was a good investment if it helped keep the TWU in place as opposed to getting a more militant union.
I doubt at the time they realized exactly how good of an investment that $3 million would turn out to be. They probably never imagined that that $3 million could be turned into $620 million!
I have no doubt that Little and company grabed some of the Presidents from the smaller Locals, and let them know that should they not reach the target, their days of collecting a 40 hour check from the company without setting foot on company property were over. So for these Presidents the stakes were no doubt high, imagine being forced back on to the floor!
One thing is certain, that if the company did not get their $620 million, bankruptcy or not, they could have stopped paying the salaries of union officers that do not technically work for the company, I guess they still could now, in fact they probably will. One of the things that proves that they did not work for the company is that while Bobby Gless was President, since he was still collecting a paycheck as a mechanic, his number came up for random drug testing. They called him at the hall and told him that his number came up for testing, he refused to get tested. Now if anyone else had done that they would have been terminated and have their liscence revoked. However this obviously did not happen. Why wasnt Bobby Gless drug tested? Well because he was not working for AA, he was just getting paid by them.
