Stop, Think and Consider the Consequences
...
Less than a year after we finally gained independence from the incompetence and malfeasance of AFA-CWA (after three failed protracted campaigns in the last decade to encroach on the Delta flight attendants), we now face fledgling union drives from competing organizations – the IAM (International Association of Machinists, which represents airline mechanics and various airline ground workers at several carriers, and the ADFA (Association of Delta Flight Attendants, which represents nobody).
Over the past several months, many of you have emailed, texted, called, and in person have asked me to comment on these newest campaigns, and after the recent communications from the company, IAM, and ADFA, I am now compelled to respond to your questions, and to provide the facts, history and analysis necessary to make rational, informed choices in the weeks and months ahead.
Less than a year after we finally gained independence from the incompetence and malfeasance of AFA-CWA (after three failed protracted campaigns in the last decade to encroach on the Delta flight attendants), we now face fledgling union drives from competing organizations – the IAM (International Association of Machinists, which represents airline mechanics and various airline ground workers at several carriers, and the ADFA (Association of Delta Flight Attendants, which represents nobody).
Over the past several months, many of you have emailed, texted, called, and in person have asked me to comment on these newest campaigns, and after the recent communications from the company, IAM, and ADFA, I am now compelled to respond to your questions, and to provide the facts, history and analysis necessary to make rational, informed choices in the weeks and months ahead.
Please forward this email to one and all and if you so
desire please print and share.
What does it mean to sign a card and when do laboratory conditions start?
There’s been a lot of discussion about card signing and what it really means, so let’s be honest about the facts of card signing:
Signing a card DOES NOT mean that you want more information about the union. Information is already readily available, and as Delta flight attendants have seen in previous elections (and in current drives) information has been and will be shoved at people who have never signed a card or expressed any other interest in receiving the information.
Signing a card DOES NOT “send a message” to the company that you are unhappy. There are better, less passive-aggressive, more direct ways to present ideas, address concerns or provide specific feedback.
Signing a card DOES MEAN (and the ONLY thing it means is) that you want a union election to be held; that you want the union whose card you sign to be on the ballot for the election and that you are willing to endure the ensuing laboratory conditions and protracted negotiations that may – at some point – result in a contract, the terms of which cannot be guaranteed in advance. It could be better than what you have now, but history has consistently shown that it ends up being worse than what you have now, particularly in light of the missed improvements that could have occurred without the imposition of laboratory conditions.
A union can force laboratory conditions on a company once it receives cards from 50% of the employees in the workgroup, plus one employee. As soon as the union receives cards from the majority of the workgroup, it can file for an election with the National Mediation Board, which triggers the imposition of laboratory conditions on the workgroup. It’s important to understand, particularly if you decide not to vote for the union that merely signing a card could subject you and your colleagues to a halt in progress and a substantial delay in improvements to pay, benefits and work rules.
What does it mean to sign a card and when do laboratory conditions start?
There’s been a lot of discussion about card signing and what it really means, so let’s be honest about the facts of card signing:
Signing a card DOES NOT mean that you want more information about the union. Information is already readily available, and as Delta flight attendants have seen in previous elections (and in current drives) information has been and will be shoved at people who have never signed a card or expressed any other interest in receiving the information.
Signing a card DOES NOT “send a message” to the company that you are unhappy. There are better, less passive-aggressive, more direct ways to present ideas, address concerns or provide specific feedback.
Signing a card DOES MEAN (and the ONLY thing it means is) that you want a union election to be held; that you want the union whose card you sign to be on the ballot for the election and that you are willing to endure the ensuing laboratory conditions and protracted negotiations that may – at some point – result in a contract, the terms of which cannot be guaranteed in advance. It could be better than what you have now, but history has consistently shown that it ends up being worse than what you have now, particularly in light of the missed improvements that could have occurred without the imposition of laboratory conditions.
A union can force laboratory conditions on a company once it receives cards from 50% of the employees in the workgroup, plus one employee. As soon as the union receives cards from the majority of the workgroup, it can file for an election with the National Mediation Board, which triggers the imposition of laboratory conditions on the workgroup. It’s important to understand, particularly if you decide not to vote for the union that merely signing a card could subject you and your colleagues to a halt in progress and a substantial delay in improvements to pay, benefits and work rules.
What are laboratory conditions?
At the most basic, practical level, laboratory conditions effectively prevent the employer from implementing – or even promising to implement – improvements in wages, benefits, work rules and quality of life matters while a union campaign is underway. The pre-merger Northwest flight attendants previously lived under laboratory-like static conditions for almost 3 years while AFA-CWA diddled with the last representational election – filing applications for election, withdrawing them and filing them again; all while the people that they were purporting to represent suffered. During that time, pre-merger Northwest flight attendants earned $41.37 an hour at the top of the pay scale, while the pre-merger Delta flight attendants got pay raises to $45.75 an hour.
But it isn’t just pay that is affected. Pre-merger Northwest flight attendants also accrued less sick time (36 hours per year, compared to 42 hours of PPT (now increased to 49 hours) for the pre-merger Delta flight attendants); less per diem, less purser pay and less vacation time, among others.
And laboratory conditions don’t end once the election for the union is over. No sir. No ma’am. They continue on through contract negotiations, which (as AFA has recently demonstrated at US Airways) can last up to seven years. Seven years of no improvements. Seven years. People graduate college and finish grad school in that time. New born babies make it to elementary school in that time. Seven years is almost the full extent of the time a president is allowed to be in office and affect policy in this country. Seven years is a long time. It’s a long time to be doing the same job with no improvements in pay, benefits, work rules or quality of life matters.
In other words, if AFA-CWA had won the Delta election, not a single one of us would today be earning $49.96 an hour at the top of the pay scale because those raises would have been prevented by . . . you guessed it: LABORATORY CONDITIONS. If that election had turned out differently, we would likely be in the middle of protracted contract negotiations while the PMNW flight attendants earn pay and benefits that are inferior to their PMDL counterparts. We would still be prevented from flying together, and the PMNW flight attendants would not be enjoying the scheduling flexibility of the PMDL system. Meanwhile, AFA-CWA would be rattling their sabers, threatening CHAOS™, and inducing us to send even more money to union headquarters via CHAOS™ bake sales, t-shirt sales and costume jewelry sales. They would be asking Delta flight attendants to contribute to a “strike fund” that AFA-CWA will never account for and that will magically disappear, once a sub-par contract is ratified. All of this would be occurring if we were under laboratory conditions.
So, why would a group – any group – want to collectively subject themselves to a potential seven years of no improvements, and what is the payoff for that squandered time? Is it some “magic prize” at the end of those seven years that somehow compensates for those seven years of sacrifice – and then some? Is the payoff at the end worth the seven years of stagnation? Was it for the US Airways flight attendants? How about for the US Airways/American flight attendants as they navigate through that merger? Will it be for the United/Continental/Continental Micronesia flight attendants, once they get everything sorted out over there?
The evidence is pretty damning that laboratory conditions don’t result in a better end result for the collective group. All they really do is delay improvements that would likely have come anyway. The advances that finally get “negotiated” don’t end up leapfrogging what the group would have gotten through incremental annual increases, and in fact those “negotiated” advances often come up short of what the group could have gotten otherwise.
We have a fresh example of exactly this phenomenon with our colleagues over at US Airways, who are represented by AFA-CWA. After seven years of negotiations; seven long years of being stuck in concessionary wages and work rules; seven years more of 40% cuts in wages and benefits than they needed to endure; after two failed tentative agreements and the removal of AFA MEC officers; after AFA-CWA president Pat Friend threatened the US Airways flight attendants that if they voted against the concessionary contract, their company would go out of business; after all that drama and turmoil and wheel-spinning and anguish, the US Airways flight attendants finally ratified their first post-bankruptcy contract.
And the top of scale pay rate in that contract? $47.15!!! That’s right, after seven extra years of concessions and sacrifice and giving more than they agreed to in their “legally binding contract”, the US Airways flight attendants earn $2.81 LESS an hour than the Delta flight attendants do. It’s hard to claim a victory in those negotiations, but that is exactly what AFA-CWA tried to do: crowing about the double-digit increases that it took to get them to $47.15.
In future emails, I will present a comparison of Delta work rules with the contract terms of our peers, since AFA-CWA was unable to provide that during the last election and since none of the union drives seems eager to address the evidentiary, objective facts that are available to all of us. (SPOILER ALERT: the AFA-CWA United “Industry-Leading Contract at the World’s Largest Airline” began 2013 with an hourly rate of $43.73 at the top of the pay scale. . . SPOILER ALERT 2: Don’t like 4:45 averaging? IAM negotiated that away in the last Continental contract. Under the current (and last) IAM Continental contract, if you fly 1:00 hour today, lay over and fly 2:00 hours home tomorrow, you get paid 3:00 hours for the trip. There are no rigs or credits or minimum guarantees)
Sign a card: an inferior contract could happen to you too . . . but only after a protracted, angst-ridden, anger-inducing, stagnated period of laboratory conditions.
At the most basic, practical level, laboratory conditions effectively prevent the employer from implementing – or even promising to implement – improvements in wages, benefits, work rules and quality of life matters while a union campaign is underway. The pre-merger Northwest flight attendants previously lived under laboratory-like static conditions for almost 3 years while AFA-CWA diddled with the last representational election – filing applications for election, withdrawing them and filing them again; all while the people that they were purporting to represent suffered. During that time, pre-merger Northwest flight attendants earned $41.37 an hour at the top of the pay scale, while the pre-merger Delta flight attendants got pay raises to $45.75 an hour.
But it isn’t just pay that is affected. Pre-merger Northwest flight attendants also accrued less sick time (36 hours per year, compared to 42 hours of PPT (now increased to 49 hours) for the pre-merger Delta flight attendants); less per diem, less purser pay and less vacation time, among others.
And laboratory conditions don’t end once the election for the union is over. No sir. No ma’am. They continue on through contract negotiations, which (as AFA has recently demonstrated at US Airways) can last up to seven years. Seven years of no improvements. Seven years. People graduate college and finish grad school in that time. New born babies make it to elementary school in that time. Seven years is almost the full extent of the time a president is allowed to be in office and affect policy in this country. Seven years is a long time. It’s a long time to be doing the same job with no improvements in pay, benefits, work rules or quality of life matters.
In other words, if AFA-CWA had won the Delta election, not a single one of us would today be earning $49.96 an hour at the top of the pay scale because those raises would have been prevented by . . . you guessed it: LABORATORY CONDITIONS. If that election had turned out differently, we would likely be in the middle of protracted contract negotiations while the PMNW flight attendants earn pay and benefits that are inferior to their PMDL counterparts. We would still be prevented from flying together, and the PMNW flight attendants would not be enjoying the scheduling flexibility of the PMDL system. Meanwhile, AFA-CWA would be rattling their sabers, threatening CHAOS™, and inducing us to send even more money to union headquarters via CHAOS™ bake sales, t-shirt sales and costume jewelry sales. They would be asking Delta flight attendants to contribute to a “strike fund” that AFA-CWA will never account for and that will magically disappear, once a sub-par contract is ratified. All of this would be occurring if we were under laboratory conditions.
So, why would a group – any group – want to collectively subject themselves to a potential seven years of no improvements, and what is the payoff for that squandered time? Is it some “magic prize” at the end of those seven years that somehow compensates for those seven years of sacrifice – and then some? Is the payoff at the end worth the seven years of stagnation? Was it for the US Airways flight attendants? How about for the US Airways/American flight attendants as they navigate through that merger? Will it be for the United/Continental/Continental Micronesia flight attendants, once they get everything sorted out over there?
The evidence is pretty damning that laboratory conditions don’t result in a better end result for the collective group. All they really do is delay improvements that would likely have come anyway. The advances that finally get “negotiated” don’t end up leapfrogging what the group would have gotten through incremental annual increases, and in fact those “negotiated” advances often come up short of what the group could have gotten otherwise.
We have a fresh example of exactly this phenomenon with our colleagues over at US Airways, who are represented by AFA-CWA. After seven years of negotiations; seven long years of being stuck in concessionary wages and work rules; seven years more of 40% cuts in wages and benefits than they needed to endure; after two failed tentative agreements and the removal of AFA MEC officers; after AFA-CWA president Pat Friend threatened the US Airways flight attendants that if they voted against the concessionary contract, their company would go out of business; after all that drama and turmoil and wheel-spinning and anguish, the US Airways flight attendants finally ratified their first post-bankruptcy contract.
And the top of scale pay rate in that contract? $47.15!!! That’s right, after seven extra years of concessions and sacrifice and giving more than they agreed to in their “legally binding contract”, the US Airways flight attendants earn $2.81 LESS an hour than the Delta flight attendants do. It’s hard to claim a victory in those negotiations, but that is exactly what AFA-CWA tried to do: crowing about the double-digit increases that it took to get them to $47.15.
In future emails, I will present a comparison of Delta work rules with the contract terms of our peers, since AFA-CWA was unable to provide that during the last election and since none of the union drives seems eager to address the evidentiary, objective facts that are available to all of us. (SPOILER ALERT: the AFA-CWA United “Industry-Leading Contract at the World’s Largest Airline” began 2013 with an hourly rate of $43.73 at the top of the pay scale. . . SPOILER ALERT 2: Don’t like 4:45 averaging? IAM negotiated that away in the last Continental contract. Under the current (and last) IAM Continental contract, if you fly 1:00 hour today, lay over and fly 2:00 hours home tomorrow, you get paid 3:00 hours for the trip. There are no rigs or credits or minimum guarantees)
Sign a card: an inferior contract could happen to you too . . . but only after a protracted, angst-ridden, anger-inducing, stagnated period of laboratory conditions.
Sincerely,
Jose Arturo Ibarra
PS: Please forward this email to one and all and if you so
desire please print and share. Please ask one and all to join the education
drive by providing their email on my BLOG http://joseaibarra.blogspot.com/
