want to really be blown away? Check this out. I found this on another board.....this sure sums up why so many UAL flight attendants are trying to dump AFA. (me for one) Glad to see that this signature campaign is going sooooo well for UFAU. It's long but accurate. Read, and be amazed:
The Case Against Pat Friend's AFA
The disrespect this work force has suffered under Pat Friend's tyrannical reign of over 20 years has been nothing short of abominable.
She has held onto office with a ferocity no one could have envisioned, and her lies have been legendary--beginning in 1985, when (on a Thursday) she promised several thousand of us, at a strike meeting, "We will NOT go back to work without a back-to-work agreement!"
That Saturday--two days later--she ordered all of us back to work--you guessed it--without a 'back-to-work' agreement!
A year or so later--when we were at our strongest as a unionized workforce--Pat Friend negotiated NOT a new and improved contract, but a simple 18 month extension of the old one. Sighs of dissappointment could be heard around the system...but these would not be her last egregious actions.
In fact, there are so many, that we can only hope to offer a 'representative selection' in this space.
In subsequent years, she was responsible for such atrocities as "negotiating" a Flight Attendant Savings Plan "offset", which--for you junior people, I know this will be hard to believe--actually consisted of a provision whereby if you contributed a dollar to your retirement savings plan, United Airlines took out a dollar of their contribution!
I swear...I am not making this up!
That mess took until the next contract--the concessionary "ten year" contract--to fix, and the fear that it wouldn't ever get fixed accounted for the huge "YES" vote among senior flight attendants, who were (justifiably) worried enough to vote for ANYTHING that might save them from this retirement DISASTER!!! After all, they'd just "contributed" thousands of bucks to go straight back into United's greedy pockets--and Pat Friend actually presided over the negotiations which ALLOWED THAT TO HAPPEN!!!
Hence, a contract nobody liked to begin with managed to "pass"...by simply telling the victims of this "Savings Plan Scam" (...does this THREAT sound familiar?) that their ONLY HOPE in undoing the damage Ms. Friend's people had done was to now "Vote YES".
Well...?
....Doesn't it all seem a little bit like TRICKERY to you, now?
The FACT is, these 'sleight-of-hand' antics have remained a constant with Ms. Friend.
In some states, signing ANY "ten year labor agreement" is ILLEGAL--and considered a form of slavery, or indentured servitude. The reason for this type of law is that economic conditions can radically change--be it from inflation, deflation, depression or even (God forbid) "regime change."
Major League Baseball, for example, is prohibited by law from enforcing a contract of that ridiculous length.
If interminable contracts--such as the "ten year" contract--were allowed for all workers, pretty soon you'd find yourself signing away your whole life, at low wages, and forced to honor a ridiculously oppressive, out-of-date work agreement. Ten years is one seventh of the average life span, nearly 25% of the average working life, and almost 40% of the average career length.
GREED & LIES
Speaking of greed, the cloudy haze under which Ms. Friend's personal expenses have been buried for all these years has yet to lift.
Her "staff" exists to serve her every whim, and consists not of the United f/as who put her there to begin with--but lackys from airlines so minor that you wouldn't even recognize their names if we mentioned them.
She "saved" union money by installing a "one-negotiating-team-fits-all" group of idiots--again, 80% NOT from United--to negotiate any and every AFA contract, no matter which airline it was for.
After 9/11, Pat Friend went on television and sent out countless press releases saying that the AFA would never support any legislation that allowed guns in the cockpit.
We took her at her word, but once again, it turned out that Pat Friend had lied.
Less than a month later, she was actually using AFA funds
(tens of thousands) to lobby FOR "Guns in the Cockpit" legislation!
Under the misleading guise of "Cabin Defense Training" for flight attendants--the first phase of which showed us how to throw a pot of hot coffee in a terrorist's face, and not much more--Ms. Friend had done a complete "about face," and in the process, she had blatantly and brazenly betrayed her constituents.
(The second "phase" of this "Cabin Defense Training" sham was quietly dumped, a year later.)
Today, United pilots DO carry guns in the cockpit--thanks, in large part, to Pat Friend--who actually had the gall to assemble a hundred or so AFA lackys and picket FOR that legislation, posing for pictures with the highly anti-labor, pro-gun Republican Senator John McCain, and then printing them--in color--at our expense, in her lavish AFA magazine, along with hundreds of T-shirts, supporting that pro-gun legislation.
When yours truly, 'True Stew,' began questioning the hypocrisy of this and other AFA misdeeds during the winter of 2001-2002, the AFA leadership first "banned" me from their discussion board, and then, upon my reappearance a month later, SHUT THE WHOLE THING DOWN permanently... within an hour.
There had been no cursing, no slander, and no rules broken--only strong, anti-Pat Friend, anti-AFA opinions expressed.
Dissent has no place in the world of a tyrant.
Under Pat Friend's horrific reign, we at United Airlines have poured millions of dollars of our United AFA union dues money into the recruitment of other airlines--when the specific aim of these efforts was (ironically) the dilution our own influence at AFA, so as to insulate Ms. Friend and her cronies from all accountability for their financial (and other) outrages. The Delta campaign, weighing in at over $5 million and still not over, was only one such example.
Pat Friend took 20 years to do it, but in 2002, she achieved her ultimate goal, which was to bring the United flight attendants under 50% of the total AFA membership.
That set the stage for her final act: The so-called "CWA merger."
This was the coup de grace...but coup de tat is more like it.
You cannot make up how "Machievellian" the mind of Pat Friend is.
Despite her best efforts at intimidation, Pat Friend was resoundingly told by United flight attendants--voting nearly 8 to 1, in an impressively high turnout--"NO!"
We don't want this so-called "CWA merger."
We don't want to be further absorbed into a gargantuan union, further removed from power, further away from accountability, and further away from focusing on we, the United Airlines flight attendants.
Unfortunately, the numbers game worked to her advantage...which was her plan, all along.
Other airlines--threatened, quite literally, with a dues increase within the referendum question--voted nearly 90% for the ballot question.
The passage of the CWA "merger" was--make no mistake--the high point of Pat Friend's personal and professional life.
Purging The Opposition
...And Covering Up A Dirty Trail Of Evidence
Following the CWA vote, in January, Pat Friend quietly oversaw the removal of Dianna Rushing from office--the largest local office on the planet--for alleged misdeeds while in office. Ms. Rushing had been among the most outspoken opponents of Friend's horrible "merger" idea, and the AFA's revenge was swift and stealthy.
In addition, seeking to cover up the incident altogether, the AFA claimed that it was protecting Ms. Rushing's privacy, by not revealing any of the alleged financial misdeeds that may have occurred, to the membership at large.
But the real truth is, Pat Friend cannot stand the idea that you, the members, might actually find out how much money can be accessed by your officers, how easily, and how many expenses you might be horrified by, which fall under 'miscellaneous budget items' that never see the light of day.
It goes to the heart of their existence, to hide any evidence of financial extravagances or alleged embezzlement at AFA.
To expose exactly how much access to cash Dianna Rushing had would mean exposing how much access to cash Pat Friend STILL has--and that is simply never going to happen, if Ms. Friend has her way.
Rather than openly offer up an explanation--or the most logical solution, a top-to-bottom, independent audit of AFA finances--which we should have received....instead, the whole Rushing affair has been hastily swept under the rug, and written off as somebody's "personal problem."
This particular incident may ultimately prove to be Ms. Friend's undoing.
When a public office holder cannot be held to acount--publicly--for their behavior while in office,
something is terribly, terribly wrong.
And when any allegation of financial improprieties, or a potential crime--no matter how 'small'--involving union funds or union officials is not promptly reported to the Department of Labor, as well as to the proper law enforcement authorities, yet another crime may have taken place.
Officers at AFA are not only accountable to Ms. Friend; they are also accountable to their constituents, and to the appropriate legal agencies.
So, whether or not any final 'settlement' was ever made between them, both Ms. Rushing and Ms. Friend remain entirely accountable for their actions.
That we have to even say this illustrates just how far off course the AFA has drifted.
Eventually, this entire story will emerge--and the result will likely not be a happy one, for the AFA; meanwhile, literally nothing about this sordid affair has EVER been reported to the United Airlines flight attendants by its labor union, the AFA.
It's as if we are children in their eyes, only to be "seen, and not heard"; it's also as if they forget exactly whose money they're 'playing' with.
When Michael Ely--then the president of DCA Council 21--began offering up his own opposition to the CWA merger, in his "Plane Truth" newsletter, Pat Friend was outraged.
She summarily brought up MEC "charges" against him, shortly after the CWA vote...and he was out of office within days.
Free speech has no place in Pat Friend's dictatorship at AFA.
