Unions' fight to represent 5,000 mechanics could ease any merger or outsourcing efforts
Excerpt:
Wow, who woulda thunnk it
Hey Don, that's because our membership are idiots!!
Yea
based on the teamsters record, we should be dumping the rest of what's left by EOY 2008... :down:
As 'Gump's Mama' would say 'Stupid is as Stupid does'
B) UT
Hoffas fighting skills were exposed at "Overnight Trucking". Hoffa Jr is not his Daddy. There was a good film out about it, I cant recall the name of it but there was one scene where a striker was asking "Where are the 2 million Teasters they said would be backing us?" Now Hoffa is saying to UAL mechanics that he is offering the support of 6 million workers.
After reading the Chicago Tribune article the Teamsters motive becomes even more obvious. The Teamsters is trying to screw the mechanics at UAL and leave them with no union. They know that those who are laid off will likely not even bother to vote, thus increasing the chance that mechanics end up with no union. By doing so they earn another feather in their cap from corporate America. Business unionism.
If the IBT helps UAL make their mechanics non-union it gives all the other pro-company unions like the TWU and IAM more of a boo factor in muting criticism from their members. "Things could be worse, look at what happened to the mechanics at NWA and UAL". This would help the airlines supress our wages for another decade and more than likely corporate America would reward the IBT by withdrawing government oversight and freeing Hoffa to crush the TDU and make the IBT as undemocratic as it used to be.
One thing I do not agree with is blaming he members.
If the IBT gets in then the leaders at UAL-AMFA didnt do a good job. It doesnt mean that the AMFA concept failed-it means that the leaders failed. Apathy is a symptom, not an excuse. Apathy is a symptom of poor leadership, a lack of resources available to the leaders or a poor structure of an organization. The members are not encouraged by what they see or hear.
The AMFA concept of getting all the mechanics into one union is still a sound strategy. It still is probably the best chance that mechanics have to get the compensation they should be getting. While I admire Delle for his committment and the sacrifices he made I always felt that his great miscalculation was underestimating mangements hostility towards giving us more.
Delle was a product of American Airlines, where management would often tell mechanics that they were willing to pay the mechanics more but not fleet service clerks. It was a lie meant to drive a wedge between mechanics and other workers. A lie that would have mechanics blaming their union brothers for their insufficient compensation instead of the company-and as a result the mechanics would not take out their fustration on the company.
Mechanics always have always been in about the best position to show dissatisfaction without it being actionable. Gordon Bethune even wrote about it in his book "From Worst to First" when he wrote that you dont want to piss off your mechanics because if you do he wont fix your airplane and there isnt much you can do about it. American Airlines, where AMFA was born, was very successful at steering mechanics fustration towards the union and other workers and away from the company. This way the company got to screw the mechanics just the same but the mechanics would blame the poor guy thowing bags for his dilemma.
This lie was a centerpoint in a battle between AAs founder CR Smith and TWU founder Mike Quill. CR Smith announced that he would give the mechanics a raise but not Fleet Service knowing full well that the union would demand that everyone get a raise. But the lie stuck and it spread with every generation of mechanics that followed. Delle and many other AMFA supporters believed this lie. Delle was caught off guard at NWA when NWA didnt greet AMFAs demands as expected. He never suspected that that the company and the unions would actually work together to destroy AMFA, he and many others actually believed that the airlines would embrace the opportunity to pay mechanics more.
Now the lie that the airlines are willing to pay mechanics a fair wage is gone. Many mechanics have been stunned by what has happened to us. What AMFA needs to do now is recover. They need to tell their members that they have to expect a fight if they want to get what they need. Just like the school yard bully who wants to take your lunch money, you have a choice, fight and probably get a bloody nose or get used to going without your lunch.
Unfortunately we have not yet seen much of a positive response from AMFA, which is still our only real hope as mechanics. They are still reeling from NWA and it appears that the business unions are going for the jugular at UAL. By voting for the IBT you would be helping to destroy the only viable, yet flawed, strategy for mechanics. Sometimes a setback can bring benificial learning and the opportunity to alter the course of a sound strategy(such as uniting mechanics across the industry into one union), but often a setback can lead the weak to seek the facade of safety in a large business union like the IBT. Remember why you left the IAM and remember that the extreme reactions that these airlines and the AFL-CIO unions took against us should tell you something, we were a threat. For a brief shining moment we got our money, that never would have happened without AMFA and it will never happen again if we retreat to the false safety of business unions that tell us we should be thankful we let them take our money. Just like with the school yard bully we stood up to him and he gave us a bloody nose, do we call it quits, fork over the money and resign ourselves to going hungry or do we fight back?
