i'm a former TWU america west worker who is now IAM us airways ... and i think i am coming to understand how IAM plans to work in the future ... kill off every other union that you can and conslidate all the power for yourself , thereby allowing you to bargain with greater authority .... it's a very vicious plan hmmmm...
Well if thats what you are seeing then its only the IAMs response to what the TWU has been doing for the last twenty years.
The TWU has grown by giving companies discounted unionized labor, thus helping to drive IAM represented airlines out of business. Basically you have it backwards, its the TWU that is trying to gain dominance.
In the same period where the IAM has shrunk the TWU has grown, not through elections but through voluntary recognition by companies and growth of companies where the TWU was in place- fueled by discounted labor rates.
You have to understand the dynamics of having a company union in place. A unionized workforce is better off competing with a non-union workforce than one that has a company union like the TWU in place. When a non-union company and a union company compete the workers of the non-union company benifit from the gains made by the unionized workers. This happens because the employer knows that if his workers dont get comparable compensation they can get a representation election going with only 35% of the workers signing cards. However if they are competing with a company union the exact opposite happens, the employer who has to deal with the real union benifits from the concessions won by the employer with the company union. If an employer has a company union like the TWU in place not only is the threshold for an election higher, 50%+1, but most workers dont have anywhere to go, because unions within the AFL-CIO will not raid each other, even if the other union is a company union.
The IAM held out for a long time. They fought to maintain equity, compensation, refused tactics that would turn members against each other, refused to have members in the same company compete for work etc,etc and all they had to show for their efforts was a declining membership. Their downfall was their refusal to attack the TWU and the union busting agreements that the TWU was awarding to airlines that were competing with IAM represented airlines, mainly AMR.In fact a former AMR member of management, Jim Little, now occupies the top seat in the TWU.
The stupidity of the IAM is amazing. They are willing to turn their members into scabs in order to bust a Union that secured high wages for their members because many of the members of that union rejected the IAM but they stand side by side with the TWU despite the fact that the TWU took more IAM members than AMFA ever did.If the IAM tried to raid TWU represented carriers they would still probably win, if they had tried it twenty years ago when the TWU led the way with industry leading concessions such as B-scale, employee contributions to current and retiree medical, junior fleet service clerks etc, etc they would have won hands down. So after twenty years of being undermined by the TWU the IAM decides to be like the TWU instead of being like a union.
