Kate Day’s Letter to her SFO Base

Kate Day, AFA-CWA President Local 97 SFO

Dear Colleague,

When I first took office as your union representative four years ago, my commitment was not only to represent you to the best of my ability, but to remain forthright and forthcoming with you; to always be honest and to give you the information that affects your career, whether it is pleasant or not.

I took my position very seriously and I tried to represent you with the honesty, integrity and dedication that you continue to deserve. It is with the purpose to keep that commitment to you intact that I write to you on my last night as your LEC president.

Last year I wrote to you regarding misgivings I had about the choices some members of the NWA MEC, International officers and others on the members' payroll were making between their personal self-interests and the advancement of the flight attendant profession. I explained then that I would continue to serve as your LEC president, so long as I found a sense of purpose and a benefit to you, not only in my service to you, but in my participation within the broader AFA structure.

Unfortunately in that ensuing year, the interests of the members - your interests - have been completely set aside in the name of a representational campaign that appears by all current measure to be unending.

It became clear to me that AFA International, with the complicity of this MEC, is more interested in 'appearances' for the sake of the campaign, than in doing the right thing for the membership. We, as a group and as a profession have suffered significantly, and, realizing that my vote as your LEC president was not enough to overcome the duplicity and deceptions, I no longer could participate in this organization in good conscience.

Among the numerous AFA transgressions, most importantly are the me-too and scope grievances. AFA has refused to pursue the second me-too grievance to arbitration, citing that it may cost $90,000 to arbitrate and that they would lose votes if they lose the arbitration. This grievance is different than the one AFA already lost, because it addresses substantial unilateral raises the NWA pilots received in November 2008, a clear violation of LOA 35. I filed this grievance after our MEC grievance chair refused to do so; and after languishing for over a year, the MEC was given the choice from the International of not arbitrating it at all, or of waiting until after the representational election. It is an abomination that AFA would set aside, or in any way delay an arbitration that has the potential of restitution to each one of us of thousands of dollars per year.

Similarly, AFA has made grave missteps along the way with regard to the scope language in our contract. In some sort of display of defiant arrogance, this MEC and the International have shunned the very Northwest flight attendants who authored and negotiated our industry leading scope language in the first place; and who fought to get it back twice before: after the Hughes AirWest/Republic merger and after the Republic/Northwest Orient merger. In an inexplicably shameless display, some LEC presidents refused to be in the same room with these fellow union members. We all see where we are as a result of this incompetence with regard to our scope language and if anyone looks for a reason as to how we got here, it is clearly a result of AFA's refusal to cooperate with its own members combined with their lack of planning, preparation and anticipation of what the company has been announcing for months. Quite simply, AFA refused to listen to the experts and failed to take the necessary steps - steps that had been taken in other airline mergers - to protect our scope language.

And while those are the two largest - and most alarming - breaches, there are other individual examples where Northwest flight attendants have lost their jobs because of secret back room deals where AFA leaders gave away contract language, or as a result of AFA representatives' blunders at Q&As and damaging testimony in arbitrations.

I am quite frankly stunned that AFA built a campaign around preserving our contract, even as the AFA insiders fritter it away page by page, day after day.

The list of egregious behavior is long. Here are some highlights:

- Pat Friend's secret private meetings with Doug Steenland during our
contract negotiations and her refusal to allow any NWA union leader to
attend the meetings.

- MEC officers simply taking money out of the flight attendant union treasury to pay themselves unapproved bonuses amounting to thousands of dollars. When I raised this issue, Bob Cannatelli, the BOS LEC president told me, "No one cares about this."

- The lack of any sort of direction, plan or strategy from the international office regarding our last contract negotiations, and the lack of any sort of future plan to deliver to you the "industry leading contract" that they keep promising.

- Grievances that have been left languishing past deadlines, or have
gone unfiled altogether because of laziness and ineptness.

- Pat Friend's participation in local council politics in collusion with her political cronies at the LEC level, and her fast and loose interpretation of the AFA Constitution,where she contradicts her own rulings depending on which LEC she was dealing with.

- The election of MEC officers who are chosen, not on the basis of experience or the competence to enforce our contract, but out of political expediency or personal bias.

- The cover up of officially approved MEC meeting minutes to redact information that might be embarrassing to AFA, including admissions that we are not advancing certain contract grievances to arbitration because they are "losers".

It is clear to me that the AFA structure is broken and leveraged by those who are less interested in serving their members than they are in their own political preservation. AFA keeps talking about a "bottom up" structure where members drive the decisions the union makes, but nothing is further from the truth in the daily operation of this union. True activists are pushed aside to make way for subservient lackeys who refuse to question the decisions that come down from the International. Even recent committee appointments at our own MEC have been secretly given to good friends and close political allies of those making the appointments. And somehow those LEC presidents who are so keen to wield their so-called power refuse to accept the responsibility that comes with that power. The end result is a lot of finger-pointing and blame-placing and back room bickering and no accountability to the members.

And for anyone who thinks that this will all be magically fixed once we have "the vote", I am here to tell you that you are wrong. There are already significant fractures between the Delta AFA organizers and the NWA AFA organizers and another huge rift between the NWA MEC and the campaign folks. The AFA structure engenders division over unity, contention over cooperation and hostility over problem-solving, and the problems are just as bad - if not worse - at other AFA represented carriers. Just the other day I learned of a plan among some United LEC presidents to elect the lesser qualified candidate for International President at the April Board of Directors meeting, so that she would provide less competition when they advanced their own candidate in three years. This is just one disturbing example of how the members' interests get shoved aside in the interest of political positioning.

So while it has been my humble honor to serve as your union representative over these last four years, I was unable to continue participating in a structure and an organization that does not serve you. I looked around at my colleagues on the MEC and saw many who spent their time - not fighting for you - but fighting for their own positions and their own expense accounts and their own flight pay loss. Many of them violate the AFA Constitution on a daily basis, by continuing to pay themselves a salary that is more than allowed them. It's no wonder they are so keen to cover up the transgressions of their cronies. I saw first hand what is meant by the phrase "As thick as thieves," and it would have been hypocritical of me to continue to participate in this sham once I realized there is no hope of overhauling the organization.

I have great hope for a better future, but not if the problems of the last four years continue at AFA. There is no leadership and no accountability to the members who fund the organization. I look forward to seeing you on the line.

All my best,
Kate
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Kate Day
AFA-CWA
President
Local 97 SFO
707-364-5538
kday@nwaafa.org