Well it looks like a set back for Sonny Hall!
In Local 100, Rojer Toussaint and most of his slate are in power. They were just re-elected.
Rojer is a dedicated Industrial unionist who bravely objected to Sonny Halls abuse of power against Local 562. 80 of the other locals in the TWU simply did as Sonny told them to do.
Unlike Sonny Hall, Rojer believes in fighting for improvements not caving in to concessions. The NYC TRansit Authority claimed poverty just like AA but Rojer still did not back down.
Local 100 has 38,000 of the 110,000 TWU members.
While he may not agree with me on this point the best thing that we can do for ourselves and the TWU at this point is leave it.
When we leave the TWU will drop to 94,000, plus if the rest of the AA -TWU go to the AGW that will drop the TWU down to 78,000.
Local 100 is not the only Local that is not happy with "Sonny the company boy". Local 234 out of PHL, with another 6000 members is not too happy and the 6000 SWA flight attendants still, after 18 months cant get a contract from the profitable SWA. Who knows maybe they will go PFAA?
38,000 + 6000 + 6000 = 50,000 out of 78,000.
Sonny's present power base comes from the ATD and the scores of tiny locals that the TWU has that are totally dependant on the International.
The TWU has something like 80 locals with only 110,000 members. When you consider the one Local has 38,000 members it means that the other 72,000 members are spread out pretty thin. Sonny often picks his lapdogs from the ranks of these tiny locals, such as Hubert Snead and Mike O'Brien-who will likely finish out Sonnys term.
So when we go AMFA, and our brothers and sisters in other departments follow us on the path to industry specific, focused unions, Jim Little, Gary Yingst, Bobby Gless and John Conley will all get what they deserve. If we complete our drives prior to the Convention in 2005 they will have had to make their choice. Stay in as Sonny Halls lapdog appointees and hope to suck up to Local 100, who they orchestrated a smear campain against or go back on the floor to work under the conditions they put in place. Jim, say goodbye to the White Suburban!
Either way Sonny is likely to be gone before 2005. Once we file he will have to go. His name is just as negative as Koziateks was. They will put O'Brien in, who is a better speaker than Hall, and make all sorts of promises about how they are a changed union. However since he will still not be elected nothing will have changed. We will still be in an autocratic union where those who have complete control over our contract are not accountable to those who have to work under it. We will still be a fragmented profession, just as vulnerable as ever to another wave of concessions with a weak company union as our defense.
The fact is at this point there is nothing that the TWU can or will even attempt to do to recover or prevent us from being subjected to more concessions. With the TWU/ATD the Concessions for dues policy over the last twenty years has been a roaring success at AA. Membership has risen from around 10,000 very well paid members to over 35,000 much lower paid members under this program. The decreased real dues per member is more than offest by the shear quantity of members. Thats a more than 200% increase in membership from a 30% decrease in real dues per member.
It must be remembered that cuts in holidays, vacation and sick time all result in lower take home pay for us but do not lower dues revenue to the International. That's why they went this route. In effect we are all paying more in dues now than we were before.
What is ironic about this is that similar circumstances keep happening over and over again.
The TWU was born as a result of massive concessions that were imposed upon workers, (however those concessions were much less than what we just saw). The company unions that were in place told the members that they had to accept these cuts, just like the TWU just told us. As a result those unions were voted out and all the transit workers, across many different companies joined the TWU.
Now we as mechanics are poised to do what Transit workers did back in the 1930s, with a few twists.
Back then they left corrupt, ineffective company unions that claimed to be craft unions to form a new militant industrial union, while we are about to leave a corrupt, ineffective company union that claims to be an Industrial union to go to a craft union.
The triggering event was similar, the failure of the leaders to mobilize opposition to unreasonable concessions.
Good bye and good riddance to Sonny Hall and good luck to Rojer Toussaint and the rest of the TWU in 2005!
Hopefully AMFA and the AGW will have organized the whole industry, including Delta by then.
In Local 100, Rojer Toussaint and most of his slate are in power. They were just re-elected.
Rojer is a dedicated Industrial unionist who bravely objected to Sonny Halls abuse of power against Local 562. 80 of the other locals in the TWU simply did as Sonny told them to do.
Unlike Sonny Hall, Rojer believes in fighting for improvements not caving in to concessions. The NYC TRansit Authority claimed poverty just like AA but Rojer still did not back down.
Local 100 has 38,000 of the 110,000 TWU members.
While he may not agree with me on this point the best thing that we can do for ourselves and the TWU at this point is leave it.
When we leave the TWU will drop to 94,000, plus if the rest of the AA -TWU go to the AGW that will drop the TWU down to 78,000.
Local 100 is not the only Local that is not happy with "Sonny the company boy". Local 234 out of PHL, with another 6000 members is not too happy and the 6000 SWA flight attendants still, after 18 months cant get a contract from the profitable SWA. Who knows maybe they will go PFAA?
38,000 + 6000 + 6000 = 50,000 out of 78,000.
Sonny's present power base comes from the ATD and the scores of tiny locals that the TWU has that are totally dependant on the International.
The TWU has something like 80 locals with only 110,000 members. When you consider the one Local has 38,000 members it means that the other 72,000 members are spread out pretty thin. Sonny often picks his lapdogs from the ranks of these tiny locals, such as Hubert Snead and Mike O'Brien-who will likely finish out Sonnys term.
So when we go AMFA, and our brothers and sisters in other departments follow us on the path to industry specific, focused unions, Jim Little, Gary Yingst, Bobby Gless and John Conley will all get what they deserve. If we complete our drives prior to the Convention in 2005 they will have had to make their choice. Stay in as Sonny Halls lapdog appointees and hope to suck up to Local 100, who they orchestrated a smear campain against or go back on the floor to work under the conditions they put in place. Jim, say goodbye to the White Suburban!
Either way Sonny is likely to be gone before 2005. Once we file he will have to go. His name is just as negative as Koziateks was. They will put O'Brien in, who is a better speaker than Hall, and make all sorts of promises about how they are a changed union. However since he will still not be elected nothing will have changed. We will still be in an autocratic union where those who have complete control over our contract are not accountable to those who have to work under it. We will still be a fragmented profession, just as vulnerable as ever to another wave of concessions with a weak company union as our defense.
The fact is at this point there is nothing that the TWU can or will even attempt to do to recover or prevent us from being subjected to more concessions. With the TWU/ATD the Concessions for dues policy over the last twenty years has been a roaring success at AA. Membership has risen from around 10,000 very well paid members to over 35,000 much lower paid members under this program. The decreased real dues per member is more than offest by the shear quantity of members. Thats a more than 200% increase in membership from a 30% decrease in real dues per member.
It must be remembered that cuts in holidays, vacation and sick time all result in lower take home pay for us but do not lower dues revenue to the International. That's why they went this route. In effect we are all paying more in dues now than we were before.
What is ironic about this is that similar circumstances keep happening over and over again.
The TWU was born as a result of massive concessions that were imposed upon workers, (however those concessions were much less than what we just saw). The company unions that were in place told the members that they had to accept these cuts, just like the TWU just told us. As a result those unions were voted out and all the transit workers, across many different companies joined the TWU.
Now we as mechanics are poised to do what Transit workers did back in the 1930s, with a few twists.
Back then they left corrupt, ineffective company unions that claimed to be craft unions to form a new militant industrial union, while we are about to leave a corrupt, ineffective company union that claims to be an Industrial union to go to a craft union.
The triggering event was similar, the failure of the leaders to mobilize opposition to unreasonable concessions.
Good bye and good riddance to Sonny Hall and good luck to Rojer Toussaint and the rest of the TWU in 2005!
Hopefully AMFA and the AGW will have organized the whole industry, including Delta by then.
