Robbed, there were many, in fact the majority imo, that read the contract. They didn't just vote on the pay. But when they questioned the contract language, the District leaders lied and deceived them. I put out legit flyers with truthful explanations but the District posted an update on the website that said I wasn't in negotiations so I really don't know the language. That made sense to a lot of folks, especially when the leaders said they were in negotiations and even though the language says one thing, the intent was another. Regarding the outsourcing, the District leaders guaranteed 96% protections and 'on record' through mailers even questioned why the company would even be able to outsource 1 station. Here take a look at one of the mailers to the members homes from the district leaders;
"96% of the entire IAM-represented Membership (those with 4/1/2006 seniority or earlier) cannot be laid-off because of outsourcing. That greatly reduces United's ability to outsource CSR work. Why outsource if you have to have jobs f or 960/o of the workforce?"
They also lied about full time jobs. When I pressed the liars about why they lifted the part time cap, they pointed to a bull crap "Full time commitment" letter. The letter itself had in bold, "Full time commitment" but the text of the letter was empty other than allowing the company to downgrade for any ole flimsy reason except to create back to back part time. Thus, after the sellout was signed, ORD whacked a couple hundred full timers just because.
So, when your union leaders, who claimed "They were there in negotiations" and "This is what the contract means" sells you out and looks you in the eye telling you that THIS is how the contract is interpreted, it sounds convincing. I don't blame the membership, I blame the leadership.
And the contempt for the membership doesn't stop there. They ask members to go out and vote for them, but then violate their bylaws. How many times do we have to look like idiots and tell members to go and vote, but the votes won't count because the union can't have a fair election and follow its bylaws? There are over 7,000 union elections a year and only about 12 that are overturned, since most unions follow their bylaws. Since 2008, the current leadership has failed each and every time they have supervised a district election. Now it looks like a rerun election in June, to do the last election over again. I'm not even sure why we need all of these AGC's. I think there are 27 but if you look at the assignments, there will be about the same amount of eboard members as there are United stations, and some of the eboard members at United have had every single one of their station assignments wiped out by potential closings. Never mind that the eboard agreed to give themselves pay raises this past November. Starting last week, their salaries went from $101,000 to $114,000. Losing membership, contracting out, and give themselves a pay raise? Really?