TWU says the Teamsters are Telling Lies

[Anomaly]

Anomaly, you mentioned "unions" helping AMFA during their strike at NWA. The only one I'm aware of is the UAW. Are there more?

I read A LOT. I do remember more than one union helping them out financially. I do not recall anyone donating the amount that UAW did, and I am still completely uncertain why UAW gave that much. Not knocking them, but that is a lot of coin.

At this late hour however, I do not have the mental energy to find the articles. I save most everything I read, but it does take me a while to find them.

For now, these are a few interesting sites which offer a bit more background in to the NWA situation. I tried to pick neutral sites, but all these are very informative reads. (Especially the last two which are two of my favorite publications. Could be from my hippie past)

http://www.kclabor.o...g_northwest.htm
http://www.usatoday....st-strike_x.htm
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/39
http://www.wsws.org/...5/nwa-a21.shtml

 

[4A Mechanic]

Could it be that they thought of AMFA members as union brothers and sisters when the other unions didnt?

 

[riceweevil]

I read A LOT. I do remember more than one union helping them out financially. I do not recall anyone donating the amount that UAW did, and I am still completely uncertain why UAW gave that much. Not knocking them, but that is a lot of coin.

At this late hour however, I do not have the mental energy to find the articles. I save most everything I read, but it does take me a while to find them.

For now, these are a few interesting sites which offer a bit more background in to the NWA situation. I tried to pick neutral sites, but all these are very informative reads. (Especially the last two which are two of my favorite publications. Could be from my hippie past)

http://www.kclabor.o...g_northwest.htm
http://www.usatoday....st-strike_x.htm
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/39
http://www.wsws.org/...5/nwa-a21.shtml

AMFA still does not have a lot of money to last in even a prolonged C11 battle with AA or any other airline for that matter. The truth is amfa NEEDED the money and still does.It cost millions of dollars per month to fight legal battles with major corporations over labor issues. Why would anyone want a union like amfa who does not have the finanical resources to represent them effectively??????????

 

[RV4]

AMFA still does not have a lot of money to last in even a prolonged C11 battle with AA or any other airline for that matter. The truth is amfa NEEDED the money and still does.It cost millions of dollars per month to fight legal battles with major corporations over labor issues. Why would anyone want a union like amfa who does not have the finanical resources to represent them effectively??????????

The TWU has money.
The TWU has large numbers of members.

Yet you are advocating leaving.

There is a flaw in your fantasy unionism vision?

Are you claiming that the TWU failed to provide you all the financial resources you needed?

If money is what you need in your union, then why leave the TWU?

Your own logic and reasoning is flawed from the simple surface to the deep in bedded truth.

 

[Bob Owens]

I read A LOT. I do remember more than one union helping them out financially. I do not recall anyone donating the amount that UAW did, and I am still completely uncertain why UAW gave that much. Not knocking them, but that is a lot of coin.

Could be that there are some real union leaders out there that really live by the concepts of "brotherhood" and "an injury to one is an injury to all". If your brother leaves you home isnt he still your brother? If you ever see brothers its pretty normal that they fight, but if somebody goes after either of them they usually have to face both of them.

I've told this story at least a dozen times but you are new so here I go again.
Several years ago I was vacationing in the West of Ireland. there was a strike, railways engineers had broken away from the big union SEPTU and formed their own union, the bosses where trying to get SEPTU to sanction allowing SEPTU engineers to scab the work and try and break the strike, despite the fact that these guys had broken away from SEPTU the union, and the Engineers refused.

Compare that to the glee and great sense of satisfaction that Unions such as the IAM, IBT, and TWU took when NWA crushed AMFA at NWA. They didnt care that the loss at NWA would affect all mechanics, even their own dues payers, their hatred for AMFA revealed what was lacking in them, beyond the slogans its all about territory and money, not the cause.

 

[xUT]

Sure thing X-u.

Again always appreciate the one liners from the wanna be's

No problem Anomaly.
Always here to serve.
So how did that opening section 6 at UA by the ibt work out?
How is the separate local promise working out?
How is the pension promise working out?
I really regret not scanning and saving the flyers you guys put out, but I didn't believe that so many would actually take the ibt promises seriously as they were clearly over reaching.
FYI, please don't quote references from unionfacts.com again.
Makes you look anti-union...
B) xUT

 

[riceweevil]

The TWU has money.
The TWU has large numbers of members.

Yet you are advocating leaving.

There is a flaw in your fantasy unionism vision?

Are you claiming that the TWU failed to provide you all the financial resources you needed?

If money is what you need in your union, then why leave the TWU?

Your own logic and reasoning is flawed from the simple surface to the deep in bedded truth.

Supporting amfa is a LOST CAUSE.
Don't be a loser.
Come over to the IBT and be a WINNER.

 

[xUT]

Supporting amfa is a LOST CAUSE.
Don't be a loser.
Come over to the IBT and be a WINNER.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB0CkB7mRiY&feature=fvwrel

 

[odie01]

Supporting amfa is a LOST CAUSE.
Don't be a loser.
Come over to the IBT and be a WINNER.

I already mailed my blank teamsters card ! So did most of TAESL! Your smokin K2 if you think the line stations and AFW buy this so called Jim Little IBT drive!

 

[Anomaly]

Could be that there are some real union leaders out there that really live by the concepts of "brotherhood" and "an injury to one is an injury to all". If your brother leaves you home isnt he still your brother? If you ever see brothers its pretty normal that they fight, but if somebody goes after either of them they usually have to face both of them.

I've told this story at least a dozen times but you are new so here I go again.
Several years ago I was vacationing in the West of Ireland. there was a strike, railways engineers had broken away from the big union SEPTU and formed their own union, the bosses where trying to get SEPTU to sanction allowing SEPTU engineers to scab the work and try and break the strike, despite the fact that these guys had broken away from SEPTU the union, and the Engineers refused.

Compare that to the glee and great sense of satisfaction that Unions such as the IAM, IBT, and TWU took when NWA crushed AMFA at NWA. They didnt care that the loss at NWA would affect all mechanics, even their own dues payers, their hatred for AMFA revealed what was lacking in them, beyond the slogans its all about territory and money, not the cause.

How can you say with such certainty that the IBT, IAM, and TWU looked upon the failed strike, looked at the destroyed families, looked at the financial ruin of so many good mechanics with "glee and a great sense of satisfaction"

In 2006, well in to the strike, my support for amfa was slipping. The Teamsters supporters were just beginning to discuss the possibilities of an election. However there was nothing but sympathy for the NWA mechanics. If I had heard anything other than that I would have never joined in support.

There has always been a wedge between amfa and the major unions. amfa tactics have diluted union solidarity over the years. It took me a while, but I have come to understand the issue. It still does not qualify your statement that ANY union would look at this tragedy towards fellow union members with any kind of glee. amfa failed these members, which is a travesty, but all unions should recognize the damage to all unions, to all mechanics by these complete failures. How can that make any union member happy?

You are an officer in the TWU. Do you speak from experience? Was glee and satisfaction your emotion to this? It certainly was not mine.

 

[Boomer]

How can you say with such certainty that the IBT, IAM, and TWU looked upon the failed strike, looked at the destroyed families, looked at the financial ruin of so many good mechanics with "glee and a great sense of satisfaction"

In 2006, well in to the strike, my support for amfa was slipping. The Teamsters supporters were just beginning to discuss the possibilities of an election. However there was nothing but sympathy for the NWA mechanics. If I had heard anything other than that I would have never joined in support.

There has always been a wedge between amfa and the major unions. amfa tactics have diluted union solidarity over the years. It took me a while, but I have come to understand the issue. It still does not qualify your statement that ANY union would look at this tragedy towards fellow union members with any kind of glee. amfa failed these members, which is a travesty, but all unions should recognize the damage to all unions, to all mechanics by these complete failures. How can that make any union member happy?

You are an officer in the TWU. Do you speak from experience? Was glee and satisfaction your emotion to this? It certainly was not mine.

I'm not Bob, and I do not pretend to speak for him or anyone else from the TWU.

As of this posting, all of the links that follow are active; given that they are now posted, I would suspect that some number of them will become inactive.

It is well documented below that the AFL-CIO, and unions representing memberships outsidie of AMFA participated in dismantling the effectiveness of the AMFA strike at NWA:


The view from the political Left:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rachleff

Peter J. Rachleff is professor of History at Macalester College in the USA. He is the author of internationally recognized academic books.

http://works.bepress.com/peter_rachleff/



Peter Rachleff conducts research in U.S. labor, immigration and African American

history. He teaches courses in these areas, as well as theme-focused courses between the

Civil War and World War II. Rachleff has tied much of his teaching and service to

interdisciplinary programs, such as Urban Studies, African American Studies, Comparative

North American Studies, and Women's and Gender Studies. Active in the community

around Macalester, from the Minnesota Historical Society to the labor movement, he is a

frequent sponsor of internships and student research projects.



Rachleff has been teaching at Macalester since 1982.



EDUCATION: B.A., Amherst College M.A., Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh

Comments from Peter Rachleff on the NWA AMFA Strike:

http://www.kclabor.org/strike_at_northwest_airlines.htm

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.

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.

IAM’s leadership is so overtly hostile to AMFA that their position is not surprising.

http://www.fightbacknews.org/2005/04/afscmeamfa.htm

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.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/853/amfa.html

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.

http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2005/09/amfa-strike.html

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.”

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.”

http://libcom.org/library/the-2005-northwest-airlines-strike

AFL-CIO Treachery
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.

http://www.socialistaction.org/pollack5.htm

Northwest exploits divisions in labor



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. But in fact, AMFA repeatedly pointed out how all unions were in the fight together, 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.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/nwa-a23.shtml

Northwest owes whatever “success” it has achieved largely to the betrayal carried out by the trade union bureaucracy. 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. The Professional Flight Attendants Association (PFAA), which like the AMFA is an independent union, has also decided to continue work.

http://www.mltranslations.org/Us/ROL/ROLaflcio.htm

No Labor Solidarity for Northwest Airline Mechanics​

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. Once successful they spun off other workers to sub-contracting and will only "protect" the narrow craft interests of mechanics. Like PATCO a quarter of a century ago, AMFA became a pariah in the labor movement.

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.

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. In an article from the Christian Science Monitor entitled "Why Big Labor hasn’t aided striking machinists," staff writer Alexander Marks accurately surmises that, "If Northwest rides out the strike and succeeds in breaking the union, it could be a watershed in the history of the American labor movement, 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, "Some labor experts go so far as to infer that Northwest isn’t alone in wanting to break AMFA, speculating that Big Labor, 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. It’ll be much easier for other unions to tell members that they must accept concessions if AMFA was killed for not doing it’."

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. 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…"

Just as with PATCO, 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. 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".

http://atwonline.com/operations-maintenance/news/northwest-moving-forward-strike-contingency-plans-0309

"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.

 

[RV4]

Excellent Post Boomer. Thank You

It is sad when affiliation and protection of the AFL-CIO becomes more important than freedom of the Union Man.
Even to the point of partnering with Corporate CEO's to exact revenge.
No wonder organized labor is going down the river.

 

[2ndGENAMT]

I agree, it is a very good post and should be in a Topic on its own..

 

[riceweevil]

The IBT dumped the AFL-CIO in 2005.

The IAM is still hanging On.

 

[RV4]

The IBT dumped the AFL-CIO in 2005.

The IAM is still hanging On.

Does not change the fact that the IBT had their regional pilots fly struck flights and assist the management being effected by the AMFA strike.