I may have posted a similar article a few months back, but in light of the recent decision to issue RFPs for the San Francisco and Dulles GQ shops, I feel this bears repeating. Scope language is the most important part of the contract, but it is typically given the least amount of attention by the membership. I think this is in part because scope language doesn't elicit excitement in the same manner -- nor is it as easy to understand -- as Schedule A wages. With the Schedule A wages you can clearly see what you are promised. With scope, you sometimes have to be a lawyer to understand what all that language means. To put it simply, scope defines our work and sets the rules and limits to protect against the loss of our work to non-bargaining unit personnel and third-party vendors. A major part of the problem with the scope language in our contract has to do with the fact that one of our past representational organizations placed a lower priority on this language than it required.
I like to use analogy to help me explain what I am trying to portray. For me an analogy that I can equate to our past scope negotiations would be the erection of a house. We the membership have witnessed much of this building being assembled, but a good portion was already in place before we came on the scene. This house was erected on a foundation of hard clay. In addition, the walls were put together poorly, but there was nice looking siding on it. Times were good and this house continued to stand. Then, bad weather started to erode the foundation and even tear apart the nice looking siding. With no money for repairs of things that should have been assembled correctly, we sold 20% of our belongings. This money was used to pay for repairs and shore up the foundation. That action didn't help in the long run and more of our belongings were sold to try to pay for temporary repairs that would get us through to better times. Unfortunately, all this did was to erode our foundation further without adding the needed protections that would keep the house standing. Now we are left with a house on a non-existent foundation, with a deteriorated veneer, and no more belongings to sell to make it look better. It is time to look again to our foundation and perform the necessary repairs that are required to allow our house to stand well into the future.
Without strong scope language we end up with, well, what we have. The Company replaces us with vendors at an alarming rate, and so we see the result of weak scope language. This is not to bash the previous Unions on the property. There were different reasons that we ended up with this scope language. The most recent and devastating reason was the 1113 bankruptcy filing. What we all learned in that proceeding was that everything including scope language has a cost. Under the IAM I was made aware early in my career of the necessity of strong scope language by a very senior General Chairman. He explained to me that he felt that while scope was critical to our survival, no one would ever go on strike over it. In his opinion the only issues this membership would fight for were wages and pension. Rather than educate the membership on the benefits of scope, the Union chose to stay the course and rest on a faulty foundation. There was a decent relationship with the Company over the years with the IAM and so their position regarding scope had some limited merit at the time, which was reflected by short-term gains. As we've seen, our numbers have decreased from 16,700 to a little less than 5000 today. That is the obvious outcome of an agreement that put secondary issues first over a period of decades. To sum this up, weak scope language is easily attainable and will lead to the continued erosion of the jobs and benefits of our fellow mechanics and friends. Unfortunately, the flip side is also true: the attainment of strong scope language does not come cheap or easy.
I know this may not be a popular position, but we need to understand what we are facing. My guess is if we ignore scope completely we could enjoy huge advances in the Schedule A. The only problem with this is that, many more of us will find ourselves unemployed. For me, I voted for change, and I voted for professional representation. I got involved again to ensure that we not only make a decent wage, but that we also have strong job protections in place so that we all know, barring any exigent circumstances, we will be employed until we decide to retire. There are people at the table now, including legal counsel, looking to win these improvements. With your support, securing strong scope protection language is an achievable and worthwhile goal.
That's all for now,
Bob
