(Delta flight attendants tell AFA No for the third time – when will Pat honor and respect the democratic process?)
Despite a clear rejection by the combined Delta flight attendants, like a bad prom date gone horribly awry, AFA International President Pat Friend and her supporters apparently do not recognize, comprehend, acknowledge or respect the fact that NO MEANS NO. It meant NO the first time. It meant NO the second time. And it means NO again. There is no yes in NO, and Pat received 9,974 nos. To set the record straight, here is the breakdown of Wednesday’s repudiation of AFA; these are the results AFA DOESN’T WANT you to know:
VOTES CAST FOR: | Number of Votes |
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA | 8778 |
Write-in: AFA | 8 |
Write-in: ALPA | 4 |
Write-in: APFA | 1 |
Write-in: Any other organization or individual | 56 |
Write-in: David Oshman | 1 |
Write-in: IAM | 13 |
Write-in: IBT | 49 |
Write-in: IUFA | 1 |
Write-in: In-house union | 11 |
Write-in: Independent Union | 1 |
Write-in: International Railroad Union | 1 |
Write-in: Paul Tanner | 1 |
Write-in: Representation | 1 |
Write-in: TWU | 101 |
Write-in: Valid Vote for Representation (Silence) | 189 |
NO, I vote for no representative | 9544 |
(AFA Attorney Ed Gilmartin, Esq, witnessed the vote count. Click here to review the official election results: http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/2345642/election-results-r-7254-pdf-november-3-2010-2-32-pm-52k?da=y)
Pat Friend’s outrageous claim that 9216 flight attendants voted for AFA is clearly a lie; only 8786 voted for or wrote in AFA – 430 people voted for different organizations and individuals (or remained silent), and 9544 voted NO to representation. Thus, AFA really lost by a margin of 1,188 votes, and not by the 328 AFA would have us believe, and that was after AFA delayed the election by two years, got the deck stacked heavily in their favor and had two out of the three spots on the election ballot.
IN TRUTH AND FACT: ONLY 46.83% OF ALL BALLOTS CAST WERE CAST FOR AFA. That’s a full 4% LESS than the 50.87% that voted for no representation.
This election was Pat Friend’s to lose, and for those of you who didn’t know it, Pat was personally running the campaign since last April, when our MEC (comprised of the nine LEC presidents) voted to fire International Vice President (and International President-elect) Veda Shook from the Delta campaign. This was their retributive act to pay Veda back for daring to run against the MEC’s and Pat’s candidate for International President. Veda’s win effectively shut the door on lucrative AFA International positions for people like Janette Rook and Shawn Fivecoat.
That’s right – Pat was grand puppeteer of her own, personal election, where she pulled the strings and signed the many, many, MANY checks, tailored to showcase and advance Pat’s personal appointees to AFA positions of power and leadership. And oh what a shame (and sham), that on the eve of Pat’s retirement, she leaves another significant marker in the legacy of her failures, borne out of her sheer arrogant advances on flight attendants who have told her time and time again that they don’t want her. The horrific prom date has now become a creepy, dangerous stalker.
Let’s be clear on one thing: if anyone is to blame for Pat’s abject failure it is Pat and Pat alone.
The NMB afforded Pat and AFA every opportunity for a win. It was Pat’s and the NMB’s decisions’ that delayed this election over and over. Remember when AFA originally promised us an election in August 2009? Remember when Pat filed for an election under the NMB’s longstanding and long upheld election rules, only to pull that filing and wait another year for the NMB to change those rules (while the NMB forced other elections to take place under the old rules)? And remember that the NMB’s subsequent rule change was upheld in federal district court?
So what more did Pat Friend want or need to win the election? As The Wall Street Journal noted on November 5, “Having lost even with a stacked deck, the Association of Flight Attendants is now blaming "unprecedented" intimidation of workers by Delta.”
While Pat continues to whine that the company interfered in the election, just what exactly does AFA brand as interference, and who is really guilty of such, the company, or AFA?
For example, AFA points out that managers called flight attendants at home and reminded them to vote in the election. That’s true – but managers read from a prepared script, and never, as AFA claims, demanded to know if or how we voted. And quite frankly, shouldn’t we vote? What’s wrong with voting, and what’s wrong with a reminder to do so? Is AFA now admitting that – despite all their cries for a democratic election – that they never really wanted us all to vote in the first place?
In true hypocritical fashion and in stark contrast to Delta’s basic phone calls, AFA made repeated harassing and intimidating calls to flight attendant’s homes, demanding to know if and how we voted. Many of you have reported receiving upwards of seven calls in a single day from the intimidators staffing the AFA call centers. So was it interference on AFA’s part, or was that okay because AFA holds everyone else to higher standards than they hold themselves? (AFA actually went so far as to include a mechanism on their website to record and even post our votes.) What sick twisted logic does AFA use where it thinks it’s OK for one party on a ballot (AFA) to threaten intimidate and harass voters, while the other party (Delta) is not allowed to make any contact whatsoever with the voters?
How about the company’s signage at inflight offices? Did those signs REALLY ever tell anyone that flight attendants should vote against AFA – did they jump off the wall and corner flight attendants, knife in hand, demanding signatures of Delta allegiance? Did they flash some subliminal meaning, barely perceptible as NWA AFA MEC Vice President Daniel Grey absurdly suggested to the Associated Press? “It's not meant to be innocuous. It's meant to say, 'Vote against the union,” Grey claimed. Daniel must have taken temporary leave of his faculties to arrive at that delusional conclusion. Next he’ll be telling the media that there were spinning pinwheels on the signs that hypnotized flight attendants into voting against AFA.
For those of us living in the real world the signs really just noted that the election was occurring, the rules had changed, we all had to vote to be counted and a large turnout would mean that we all participated in the election.
On the other hand, AFA had no problem staffing crew lounges with their supporters, who demanded that flight attendants sign rosters declaring that they voted yes for AFA. Once again, harassment and intimidation by AFA, or was that okay because AFA activists have inherited some sort of God-given right to act like Teamster bullies and thugs? If Delta had employed one tiny fraction of the dirty tricks, scare tactics and innuendo based stories that AFA had, AFA supporters would be screaming about it until the end of time. Apparently in AFA’s eyes, what’s good for the goose is NOT good for the gander.
What about those flyers that the company mailed and the videos management produced? Well according to Pat Friend, the company shouldn’t have the opportunity to defend its name and its leaders or explain its policies and procedures with the truth against ridiculous attacks by AFA staffers, cohorts and insiders like Scott Braxton, who compared Delta’s CEO to Hitler on his averagejoe website: a defamatory statement that was picked up by the press. Ironically and hypocritically, Pat and company had no comment about the outrageous attacks made by their allies, including self-proclaimed AFA warrior – and DTW LEC presidential candidate Braxton.
Will we ever know how much of our dues Pat wasted during her two-year campaign, which included websites, flyers, videos, songs, posters, emails, hotlines, consultants, and armies of paid flight attendants staffing airports, crew lounges and hotel lobbies around the world? Perhaps that money would have been better spent negotiating a contract for the USAirways/America West flight attendants, who have been waiting for more than five years for AFA to complete negotiations and merge their seniority list. AFA keeps claiming it is a bottoms-up organization, yet I find it hard to believe that the majority of AFA flight attendants approve of their dues money being flushed down the campaign toilet of failure time after time, while AFA contracts are left neglected and abused at the hands of Pat and her hand-picked negotiators at the International office.
So now like a poor sport Pat’s going to file interference charges against the company. In the meantime Pat Friend is preventing each of us from achieving raises in pay, benefits and work rules that amount to over $1,000 per month, on average, per flight attendant. We will also miss out on several thousands of dollars of Delta profit-sharing, if Pat pouts past December 31, 2010, and continues to dispute the results of a democratic election.
Pat Friend is also preventing us from moving forward in finally being able to mix crews with the Delta flight attendants, so that both groups will have increased flying flexibility and access to new crew bases. Clearly, Pat and AFA are not in this for the Delta flight attendants but only for the potential to increase the AFA coffers. At this point all evidence points to Pat’s realization of her failure and her very clear intent to drag the Delta flight attendants down with her, for our refusal to pay her $12 million dollars in annual dues to fund her irrational and destructive shenanigans.
Give me a break - hypocrisy is hypocrisy, no means no and a loss is a loss. No matter how you want to spin, twist and twirl the truth, you lost, Pat. You can't have it both ways. It’s time for you to man up, pull up your pants, and get the hell out of our lives.
Sincerely,
Jose Arturo Ibarra
