To me going back to smaller Locals would be a mistake. While I didn't like the method, the structure or the motive that the Little Videtich team came up with I would not want to see us go back. We have been able to address most of the issues of Littles imposed structure and the Lombardo team has been more receptive to reforms than the Little team was. Title II remains a huge problem in the current structure, especially if we are headed towards any sort of negotiations.
There is little doubt that the intent of 591 was because the moons finally aligned and all five Presidents from the line were on the same page, but that situation is the exception not the rule, but even when we were all in agreement we still had line mechanics who were not in a Line Local such as RDU, DCA, ATL, MCO, SAT, TUL, and STL, so even if we were all on the same page we could not say that all line maint was. We were fortunate to have Brian McMahon out of DCA and the mechanics in RDU voted to have nobody rather than have their FSC President represent them but in the end that wasn't enough.
The fact is that we (the line Presidents) had met and spoken about consolidating the Locals to have a single local. However we would have preferred that we put together the structure, the bylaws and then put it to a membership vote. Let us make the arguments as far as the benefits and let the members decide. But the smaller Locals simply were not working as far as negotiations.
As small Locals we had very little authority and Larger Locals such as 514 would simply impose their will on us through a roll call vote. 514 had the money to finance bringing small locals that had one or two title II guys in there whose sole purpose was to either vote however 514 dictated or call for the roll call vote so 514 could dictate. Another problem with the small Locals is that it increases the odds that we will end up with at least one Todd Woodward type in there, I don't want to go back to that.
I really don't see any significant advantage to having us split into many Locals, just as I don't see any advantage to being split between two Unions. We already saw a couple of significant advantages to being consolidated, one being who sits on the System Board. When we were all split up the International picked who sat on the committee. So if a Local was 'out of favor"with the International they would simply let any grievances put forward by those Locals fail, if it resulted in a negative change in how the contract was interpreted that was even better because then they would slip it out there that the Local Leadership was to blame because they failed in arbitration. Now 591 picks who sits on the panel, so we know that the Union advocate will not only vote in favor of the Union but also make an honest effort to insure that the arbitrator gets a balanced input from the panel. We had cases such as the Santos grievance where the Union advocate, picked by Don Videtich, who could not stand Santos or Local 562, didn't even dissent to the Arbitrators decision against the Union even though the contract language was clear.
Another advantage, which is improving as we go is inter-region standardization and better communication between the regions. This way regions or stations cant be pitted against each other to the advantage of the company (another point against being split between two Unions). While we have a ways to go its getting better. Now there is more discussion between the regional VPs than there was between the five Local Presidents.
There is one big structural issue that still needs to be resolved that would likely never be addressed if we were all split up again, and thats Title II. Since the very beginning back in 1999 we all knew that the structure was deeply flawed, just as with 591 the motives for the five line Locals was not to help us mechanics, it was to help the International break up a rare alignment of Local Presidents who would not fall in line with the Internationals pro-company agenda and try and thwart an AMFA drive. Early on there were proposals to fix these structural problems such as the Line guys in Local 510 (DCA, ATL, MCO) and the totally disorganized structure of Title II, which resulted in more representatives ostensively from Title II than from Title I, in some cases Fleet service clerks, but or course they were rejected. We have a better shot at finding a resolution to the structural problems now as a larger Local than we did in part because as smaller Locals there wasn't a consensus on how to approach the Title II issue.
Those structural divisions cumulatively, are the reason why we are the worst paid mechanics in the industry, Videtich, Little and the company leveraged those structural division to get the Yes vote in 2003 and 2012. Structural divisions that they exploited should not be put back in place, we need to eliminate more of them. This structure only exists in M&R, it doesn't exist with the Pilots, Flight attendants, stores, fleet or Dispatch and M&R is the only group that went into BK significantly lower than the rest of the industry and came out even lower. Its why we have less vacation than Stores and are the only group that loses two half days of sick pay per occurrence as well.
We dont need to go backwards, we need to move forward, the next big issue is restructuring Title II. We cant allow it to stay as it is if they are to stay with us, but the choice should be theirs, either they all come with us and stay in our book, they all go into their own Local and stay in our book or get their own, or they go with fleet and get their own book.
