I forgot about that. Their Unions didn't lie to them. The IBT side had only just become represented and they didn't even have their first contract in place. The Watcher also went on to say that those members are OK with the Association which isn't surprising since apparently those members from America West were ok without a Union, like most of the working population of the country and only got a Union when they realized that with the merger, without a Union they would likely get stapled to the bottom of the Seniority list.
Abe Lincoln said it best "A house divided can not stand". If we are divided between two unions we will never have the Unity (that the pilots or Flight attendants have, and even theirs isn't perfect) to take on the company and get us an industry leading contract. Industry leading not for a few hours on DOS and bottom of the industry for the next five years, when they then take 4 years to negotiate their next 5 or 6 year momentarily "industry leading contract" (with a measly $3000 signing bonus) but a short two year at most industry leading contract. (Remember long term contracts are only binding on workers, the AMR bankruptcy proves that even healthy profitable companies can use C-11 to get concessions through court that they could not get at the bargaining table) We saw how the IAM sat out any criticism of Parker even while the TWU side was having demonstrations (An IAM member even crashed a town hall to praise Parker). THEY HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO PULL OFF A DISPLAY OF UNITY AND THEY FAILED!!! This Association has already proven that they cant even pull off a unified demonstration, let alone an industry leading contract. How many more years do we have to give them before we have had enough?