Someone please explain

getreal

Member
Jul 23, 2008
62
0
Someone tell me exactly how much money the TWU is stealing from us annually and what
in the hel* they are doing with it. :angry:
 
umm, well that would be 2 hours of my pay per mo., which equals about 740.00 per year. It's all stolen!!! :shock:

Where does it go??? :blink: To fat cat lobbyists and the likes of little jim and burchette. :down:
 
Someone tell me exactly how much money the TWU is stealing from us annually and what
in the hel* they are doing with it. :angry:

They are stealing the equivelent of twice your hourly earnings per month, so around three hours of your net pay.

One third of them go to the International. There it is used to pay for the six figure salaries and generous benifits they say would be unreasonable for you to ask for. Those benifits include, but are not limited to a pension plan that has a multiplier of 2.5 (vs 1.67 for you), includes every year of service (unlike yours where you lose the first year-effectively lowering that 1.67 multiplier) and has a 5% yearly COLA. Your dues are used to insure that even retired TWU International officers and employees recieve bigger raises every year than you do.

A few years back there was a push to force labor unions to itemize all expenditures over $5000. The International freaked. At a time where airlines were using BK to bust workers contracts and take away 25% of our pay, laying off thousands of workers and imposing draconian working conditions all the major unions were concentrating on getting that bill killed. That bill was the major topic of the 2003 COPE Convention.

If this bill had gone through then members could see how much the union is spending on vehicles for people who work in NYC representing Mass Transit Workers (guess the Subway's not good enough for them). We could see how they lavish themselves with our dues. Such transparency would be disasterous for them. We still wouldnt see the $400 dinners or posh hotel suites but it would have been an improvement.

The other 2/3 of your dues goes to your Local. Depending on where you are, Tulsa being the only exception, the Locals are kept so small that they are financially unfeasable. The membership of AA which is split into 21 seperate locals is pretty close in size to Local 100, or at least they used to be. Logically workers at AA should have a Local thats just as powerful as Local 100 but they dont. With each of those 21 locals having their own facilities, E-boards etc most of the 2/3s is eaten away by salaries and overhead such as rents or mortgages(for buildings that the International will own), supplies etc leaving very little money for anything else. The Locals tend to have very little money for arbitrations, training or campaigning, even though the company subsidizes the TWU with payments totaling over $3 million a year. We still have 21 locals even though roughly the total AA membership has declined by a third. That means while expenses have stayed the same revenue has been slashed by more than a third due to the paycuts and membership loss. Our 21 Locals are weaker than ever. For instance Local 501, which has been in existance since 1946 only had a total of $16,000 in cash on their last finacial report(http://erds.dol-esa.gov/query/orgReport.do), they had another $400,000 in investments. So they have accumulated less than $10,000 a year during its entire existance. If this was a local that was involved in strikes that might not seem that bad but the TWU has not struck since 1969. Thankfully Local 501 has new leadership, the recently departed leadership-which the International loved, recieved a much healthier local than they passed on. According to Little they must have done a great job, he even rewarded them for impoverishing the membership by elevating their President to the International!

Members only have some access to Local monies in that they can influence to some degree how the monies are spent. They have ZERO access to International funds. On the Local level they also can see with much greater detail where every penny goes. By forcing the membership of AA to be split into 21 seperate locals it insures that the members are essentially kept broke, in the meantime the International collects the same amount of dues. Its a structure that makes the International powerful and the members weak.
 
I believe the headline should read "Corporate Unionism" and the philosophy is I represent you and I benefit from just doing that. They are not held accountable just like corporate america who blame labor and when things go bad the TWU blames the membership!
 
I work for DL and am asked all the time "why aren't you union".Thanks for the answer.


It is not the union that is bad, it is the people running the union that makes it bad. As upset as I am with the TWU, I prefer having a union where I have some say and protection from being fired because management feels like it or hold it over your head. A contract is binding and holds in court. Being with DL you have no say, no contract to go by, and no protection procedures.
 
The TWU is not stealing anything. I know a lot of you guys are AMFA boosters (FURP!) but to say the TWU is stealing from us is nonsense. I'm still of the opinion that TWU did a good thing in getting that offer from the company of 5% and 3.5% payouts when oil was at $130-$140. What the hell has APA or APFA gotten for their trouble? And yet here we go, following the APA path with the billboards attacking the company... That got the pilots real far.
 
The TWU is not stealing anything. I know a lot of you guys are AMFA boosters (FURP!) but to say the TWU is stealing from us is nonsense. I'm still of the opinion that TWU did a good thing in getting that offer from the company of 5% and 3.5% payouts when oil was at $130-$140. What the hell has APA or APFA gotten for their trouble? And yet here we go, following the APA path with the billboards attacking the company... That got the pilots real far.

Typical TWU Lackey. Go for the money. Did you see the contract language on the proposal that was turned down? No because it was not even written. Yea go for the money and forget about the details. Live for today and screw tomorrow. Typical TWU thinking. Let us look at the entire package and give us time to review it in full. That is how a real union who is looking out for the best interest of its members operates. Not a union body who cares about themselves and screws the membership with a line of BULL. Forget about AMFA, they do not represent us and have no affect at AA. We have to worry about ourselves and the TWU non elected self appointed International officers who award themselves pay raises from our dues money. We have no say in this issue. Unheard of with the pilots and flight attendants union of American Airlines. Go ahead and rip into my post but the truth hurts and the truth is the truth.
 
Typical TWU Lackey. Go for the money. Did you see the contract language on the proposal that was turned down? No because it was not even written. Yea go for the money and forget about the details. Live for today and screw tomorrow. Typical TWU thinking. Let us look at the entire package and give us time to review it in full. That is how a real union who is looking out for the best interest of its members operates. Not a union body who cares about themselves and screws the membership with a line of BULL. Forget about AMFA, they do not represent us and have no affect at AA. We have to worry about ourselves and the TWU non elected self appointed International officers who award themselves pay raises from our dues money. We have no say in this issue. Unheard of with the pilots and flight attendants union of American Airlines. Go ahead and rip into my post but the truth hurts and the truth is the truth.

I never said the TWU is perfect (it's not) or that we should have taken the last package blindly. What I did say was that TWU was able to negotiate a payout to us in a very tough environment. That counts for something. Of course I would have read the rest before voting yes.

You don't have a monopoly on truth any more than I do.
 
I never said the TWU is perfect (it's not) or that we should have taken the last package blindly. What I did say was that TWU was able to negotiate a payout to us in a very tough environment. That counts for something. Of course I would have read the rest before voting yes.

You don't have a monopoly on truth any more than I do.

They negotiated a payout? You got something that I didnt?

Why did the TWU wait until we were in a "very tough enviornment"? We had the option for early openers, in fact Little claimed that he was going to get it all back by 2006 when in 2003 he signed the contract into place and when AA was making a profit, off our 25% paycut, they stayed mute. Was this because they personally stood more to gain by watching the stocks go up than by opening the contract and getting us everything back?

Jim Little hasnt done anything that counts for something. His accomplishments are of as much value as his Masters degree from Columbia State University.

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