Today while reading Yahoo! Business news related to United Airlines I came across this article. The article talks about the IAM trying to organize the Mechanics and Related group again. I was not surprised to see this as I have told several of you that I have been approached by the Grand Lodge recently to help in this effort. I respectfully declined for several reasons.
The first reason I said no thank you, is that I am impressed so far with what the Teamsters have done for us. In both Negotiations and Arbitration cases we now have Attorneys actively participating in the representation of the membership. While the country and the airline industry continues in a downward spiral the IBT has done what it could with the language we have to protect us. That is not a put down on either of the previous Unions on the property but our contract is currently a shambles. The IBT is also working hard on the Hill to ensure that our craft is protected through legislative action. I have had the opportunity to help in this effort and have witnessed the IBT using outside professional Lobbyists as well as our internal Attorneys to push our issues to the forefront.
The second reason is numbers. No I'm not going to preach about safety in numbers, but rather we need to take a look at our numbers. We currently have about half of the unit on layoff status with permanent recall rights. This not only makes it exceedingly difficult to get to the fifty percent plus one threshold, it also makes it very likely that a decertification would take place in an election. I don't say this to scare anyone because the IBT faced the same obstacle and overcame it. The question is how did they do it? Well as many of you know they made home visits to our laid off members, as many as five and six visits to make sure these people voted. That brings me to another number which is a million. How many millions did the IBT spend to get the right to represent us? I don't know but having worked on previous organizing campaigns I would guess that it was close to five million given the effort that was put forth. Will the IAM put this kind of money into getting us back? I guess it is possible, but I have my reservations.
The third reason is the potential risk to reward. In other words what are we trying to achieve by organizing the IAM back on the property? I've read on The-AMT that we will be given our own District and Locals which will have autonomy within the IAM. While this sounds like a good idea on the surface there are a couple of potential roadblocks that would need to be faced. The first would be a need to have a waiver from the IAM Constitution that would allow the new District to have the ultimate authority over our agreement including the right to authorize a strike on our own. Otherwise if I remember correctly the President of the Union retains the ability to accept an agreement on our behalf or to authorize us to go on strike. The next issue with this is the structural breakdown and the money needed to run such an organization. As many of you know I was President of a Local that had 5000 members at one point. As I see it we would have smaller locals supporting an autonomous District. What does that mean for us as the members? Well for IAD we would have about 300 give or take, plus the members from USAirways in DCA and maybe Baltimore if they are allowed to separate from their current Locals. So let's say we have 600 people here and we had to support at least two full time officers as well as Grand Lodge, District Lodge, and AFL-CIO per capita you're looking at spending most of your dues revenue just on these items. In San Fran you could do somewhat better due to the number of people that would be in the local, but that leaves four other somewhat dysfunctional Locals in the new District. And why do we need a Local Lodge that caters only to our needs? In my few years as President the only time people really cared about what was going on was at the end of Negotiations. Outside of those times we were lucky to get more than a handful of participating members of any classification. So I end this paragraph wondering what would be the benefit of having poorly funded Locals answering only to mechanics.
The last reason is motive. I have no grievance with the IAM and if I had answered differently on the call from the Grand Lodge, and the IAM were successful, there could potentially been a position waiting for me since I was previously an Officer of both a Local Lodge and District 141-M. This decision in my estimation would have been a great choice for me personally had the IAM succeeded, but a poor choice for the membership as a whole because of the potential risk for decertification. From what some of my old friends in the IAM are telling me this effort is being launched by the old Officers of AMFA Local 9 in San Francisco. My question to them is what is your motivation? Do you have the membership's best interests in mind or your own?
That's all for now,
Bob
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