WHY DON’T WE HAVE A CONTRACT?
Simplest answer, because instead of a Union like all the other represented workers at AA we have an Association of two Unions who were more concerned about dues than whats best for their members. The old testament talks about how two women made claims to a baby before the King, the King said "split the baby in two", knowing that remaining as one would be better the one who truly cared gave up the baby rather than split the baby in two, in our case they chose to split the baby.
The Association took two flawed structures and joined them into one under a flawed agreement that did not consider the wishes or interests of their respective memberships one iota. It was a Financial deal between the TWU and the IAM-PERIOD. They promised to allow us to vote on this Association but then appealed to the NMB to push it through without a vote.
Flaws within the IAM.
I'm not and never was a member of the IAM, so I will be as brief as I can and admit this is an outsiders perspective however if I transferred to certain stations I would be forced to leave the TWU and pay higher dues with the IAM. The IAM is a TOP DOWN Union. Their culture when it comes to Contract negotiations is "Sit down, shut up and we will tell you when to vote Yes". Despite this they had a good track record up until the post 9-11 era. In fact they held onto things that we in the TWU gave away in the 80s right up until their carriers filed Bankruptcy after 9-11, in fact in many respects IAM contracts still have better terms for its members than the TWU-AA agreement, which in many respects is not only the worst agreement in the industry, but one of the worst major agreements within the TWU. (I don’t know of any other Union Contract that only offers 5 days of PTO per year for the first 5 years and only recognizes 5 Holidays and only pays half pay for working the Holiday-these Industry bottom terms have been in place for 14 years). Over the last 20 years or so, IAM membership declined by massive numbers, mostly through Liquidation and decertification. We know that the younger members at USAIR are not happy with the IAM and the older guys feel they are stuck with them because of the IAM Pension. (In case you have forgotten one of the terms of the Association agreement is to put us ALL into the IAM Pension-a deal that would save AA millions, and if it saves AA money it's safe to say that money is coming out of your pocket!). What I said about their membership numbers plummeting should be an omen as to how secure the IAM Pension will be in the future. The IAM narrowly stayed in place when their members pushed for a representation election shortly before the merger. As I said before the IAM is a Top Down organization. Their International elections are at best sketchy, which helps keep guys in place from long gone carriers. Speaking of Sito Pantoyja, from what I recall he is a good guy, and he works hard, but he has not been an aircraft mechanic for decades. The Industry, working conditions and terms are radically different from when he last used his A&P. If he loses his job with the IAM he has no place to go back to as he didn’t work for USAIR or American yet currently he is in charge of the Association. (He is eligible to retire and will no doubt be more comfortable in his retirement than any of his formere coworkers or current members.). How did Sito get the job of representing USAIR M&R workers? They didn’t vote for him, nor can they remove him. THAT’S A PRETTY BIG FLAW.
Flaws with the TWU
Where do I start? We all know the history, and it's not pretty. Thankfully the top structure within the ATD that helped write that disastrous history has been reduced and reorganized. The problem is that they didn’t fix what was left. They cut off the head but left the rest of the mess and then slammed us into this Association. When it comes to TWU M&R we have our membership spread out between seven different Locals, four of which are dominated by members under different contracts. What this means is that as far as setting policy on M&R within the TWU it's possible to have 4 people out of the seven who are not working under our contract vote on what the objectives and policy will be. It's possible to have 4 Fleet Service clerks from Fleet dominated Locals vote on M&R issues no M&R from the three M&R Dominated Locals voting on Fleet Service issues. If ever there was a tie tie breaker would be a Fleet Service Clerk from the International, and only one person from M&R is in the International, and he holds a minor position that allows him to vote as some International meetings, all the rest are from Fleet Local 591 and 567 were excluded from the International at the last Convention, nobody from Line Maintenance or Stores was asked to take part. M&R Line has basically been disenfranchised from the TWU, this began at the last Convention when Local 591 and 567 were ostracized from the podium and excluded from nearly all the Committees of the Convention even though we were some of the first to support the ouster of Jim Little and his gang. Promises were made to fix this but those promises were never acted upon. The new regime did make some positive changes as I mentioned earlier but did not go far enough, they stopped at changes that helped the bottom line of the TWU and did nothing to correct the rest of the failed divisive structure that led us to being worse off in many respects than non-union.
Flaws within the Association
So we have two deeply flawed organizations that stripped the membership of any possibility of Unity by jamming us into this Flawed Association without a Vote. We have Legacy USAIR on one side with the IAM, legacy AA with the TWU on the other. Legacy USAIR has more Vacation, More Sick time, More Holidays and more pay for working the Holidays but stuck in the what will likely become a defunct IAM Pension Plan and more outsourcing, they appear to be fairly happy with the current deal, and Legacy AA which lags not only the rest of the Industry but even their legacy USAIR coworkers who are rumored to be blaming one of the TWU members of the committee for the Associations failure to get us a new deal that delivers to what USAIR management promised us before the merger(because he expects AA to live up to their word). At a meeting to sell the Unions on supporting the Merger Isom promised that if we were the biggest we would be the best paid, IIRC that was in 2012.
Now we have management going around the system blaming the Association for management's refusal to live up to their promise, a promise they sort of lived up to with every other work group except those in the Association. "The Union cant cherry pick the contracts" Isom said at a recent town hall, keep in mind there are mostly pits in those contracts because he is talking about the two worst contracts in the industry. Clearly their position has changed from "Best in the Industry" to "Not even the few cherries from the two worst contracts in the industry". The Association won't come out and admit these are the worst deals in the Industry because that's an admission to the failures of both organizations.
Let's face it if after two years of negotiating, more than two years after our coworkers got industry leading and the company is once again readjusting their pay to keep parity with the industry, even though they don’t have to, and this Association can't even get us parity within our own work group, this organization has FAILED.
So where do we go from here? Do we stay with a failed structure in a failed Association that has left us languishing at the bottom of the industry while the company makes record profits year after year?
The two year moratorium on representation elections for M&R at AA imposed by the NMB is coming to an end. We have choices now. Maybe we should remind the Association of that.
Simplest answer, because instead of a Union like all the other represented workers at AA we have an Association of two Unions who were more concerned about dues than whats best for their members. The old testament talks about how two women made claims to a baby before the King, the King said "split the baby in two", knowing that remaining as one would be better the one who truly cared gave up the baby rather than split the baby in two, in our case they chose to split the baby.
The Association took two flawed structures and joined them into one under a flawed agreement that did not consider the wishes or interests of their respective memberships one iota. It was a Financial deal between the TWU and the IAM-PERIOD. They promised to allow us to vote on this Association but then appealed to the NMB to push it through without a vote.
Flaws within the IAM.
I'm not and never was a member of the IAM, so I will be as brief as I can and admit this is an outsiders perspective however if I transferred to certain stations I would be forced to leave the TWU and pay higher dues with the IAM. The IAM is a TOP DOWN Union. Their culture when it comes to Contract negotiations is "Sit down, shut up and we will tell you when to vote Yes". Despite this they had a good track record up until the post 9-11 era. In fact they held onto things that we in the TWU gave away in the 80s right up until their carriers filed Bankruptcy after 9-11, in fact in many respects IAM contracts still have better terms for its members than the TWU-AA agreement, which in many respects is not only the worst agreement in the industry, but one of the worst major agreements within the TWU. (I don’t know of any other Union Contract that only offers 5 days of PTO per year for the first 5 years and only recognizes 5 Holidays and only pays half pay for working the Holiday-these Industry bottom terms have been in place for 14 years). Over the last 20 years or so, IAM membership declined by massive numbers, mostly through Liquidation and decertification. We know that the younger members at USAIR are not happy with the IAM and the older guys feel they are stuck with them because of the IAM Pension. (In case you have forgotten one of the terms of the Association agreement is to put us ALL into the IAM Pension-a deal that would save AA millions, and if it saves AA money it's safe to say that money is coming out of your pocket!). What I said about their membership numbers plummeting should be an omen as to how secure the IAM Pension will be in the future. The IAM narrowly stayed in place when their members pushed for a representation election shortly before the merger. As I said before the IAM is a Top Down organization. Their International elections are at best sketchy, which helps keep guys in place from long gone carriers. Speaking of Sito Pantoyja, from what I recall he is a good guy, and he works hard, but he has not been an aircraft mechanic for decades. The Industry, working conditions and terms are radically different from when he last used his A&P. If he loses his job with the IAM he has no place to go back to as he didn’t work for USAIR or American yet currently he is in charge of the Association. (He is eligible to retire and will no doubt be more comfortable in his retirement than any of his formere coworkers or current members.). How did Sito get the job of representing USAIR M&R workers? They didn’t vote for him, nor can they remove him. THAT’S A PRETTY BIG FLAW.
Flaws with the TWU
Where do I start? We all know the history, and it's not pretty. Thankfully the top structure within the ATD that helped write that disastrous history has been reduced and reorganized. The problem is that they didn’t fix what was left. They cut off the head but left the rest of the mess and then slammed us into this Association. When it comes to TWU M&R we have our membership spread out between seven different Locals, four of which are dominated by members under different contracts. What this means is that as far as setting policy on M&R within the TWU it's possible to have 4 people out of the seven who are not working under our contract vote on what the objectives and policy will be. It's possible to have 4 Fleet Service clerks from Fleet dominated Locals vote on M&R issues no M&R from the three M&R Dominated Locals voting on Fleet Service issues. If ever there was a tie tie breaker would be a Fleet Service Clerk from the International, and only one person from M&R is in the International, and he holds a minor position that allows him to vote as some International meetings, all the rest are from Fleet Local 591 and 567 were excluded from the International at the last Convention, nobody from Line Maintenance or Stores was asked to take part. M&R Line has basically been disenfranchised from the TWU, this began at the last Convention when Local 591 and 567 were ostracized from the podium and excluded from nearly all the Committees of the Convention even though we were some of the first to support the ouster of Jim Little and his gang. Promises were made to fix this but those promises were never acted upon. The new regime did make some positive changes as I mentioned earlier but did not go far enough, they stopped at changes that helped the bottom line of the TWU and did nothing to correct the rest of the failed divisive structure that led us to being worse off in many respects than non-union.
Flaws within the Association
So we have two deeply flawed organizations that stripped the membership of any possibility of Unity by jamming us into this Flawed Association without a Vote. We have Legacy USAIR on one side with the IAM, legacy AA with the TWU on the other. Legacy USAIR has more Vacation, More Sick time, More Holidays and more pay for working the Holidays but stuck in the what will likely become a defunct IAM Pension Plan and more outsourcing, they appear to be fairly happy with the current deal, and Legacy AA which lags not only the rest of the Industry but even their legacy USAIR coworkers who are rumored to be blaming one of the TWU members of the committee for the Associations failure to get us a new deal that delivers to what USAIR management promised us before the merger(because he expects AA to live up to their word). At a meeting to sell the Unions on supporting the Merger Isom promised that if we were the biggest we would be the best paid, IIRC that was in 2012.
Now we have management going around the system blaming the Association for management's refusal to live up to their promise, a promise they sort of lived up to with every other work group except those in the Association. "The Union cant cherry pick the contracts" Isom said at a recent town hall, keep in mind there are mostly pits in those contracts because he is talking about the two worst contracts in the industry. Clearly their position has changed from "Best in the Industry" to "Not even the few cherries from the two worst contracts in the industry". The Association won't come out and admit these are the worst deals in the Industry because that's an admission to the failures of both organizations.
Let's face it if after two years of negotiating, more than two years after our coworkers got industry leading and the company is once again readjusting their pay to keep parity with the industry, even though they don’t have to, and this Association can't even get us parity within our own work group, this organization has FAILED.
So where do we go from here? Do we stay with a failed structure in a failed Association that has left us languishing at the bottom of the industry while the company makes record profits year after year?
The two year moratorium on representation elections for M&R at AA imposed by the NMB is coming to an end. We have choices now. Maybe we should remind the Association of that.
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