Life with IAM
I spent all day trying to get the answers to at
least some of the questions I posted previously for the Machinists union. I
even tried to gain clarity on what some IAM supporters meant when they falsely
claimed that we would “negotiate” our dues amount. But it was not to be. One of
the IAM supporters who made that claim refused to answer my question. She
directed me, instead, to the IAM website and accused me of harassing her for
asking the question in the first place. How is that type of deflection and lack
of transparency going to help us at the bargaining table?
Since there was no information at all about dues
on the Delta Machinists website, I went to the IAM-ExpressJet flight attendant
negotiations committee website. Surely there would be some mention of the
negotiations over union dues. After all, IAM has been trying to negotiate a
contract for the ExpressJet flight attendants for almost five years now, so
they must have gotten to the dues negotiations by now.
Needless to say, I came up empty-handed on the
dues issue, because the dues are decided by the Constitution and the IAM
International . . . not the members they represent. But found something even
more disturbing:
IAM HAS NEGLECTED TO UPDATE ITS MEMBERS AT
EXPRESSJET ON THE NEGOTIATIONS PROCESS FOR OVER FIVE MONTHS!
Check it out here: http://66.147.244.241/~iamoneun/
The last update was on August 14, 2014 and it
states: “This week’s session was spent regrouping, organizing and strategizing
to move forward as a group.” (Translation: “We’re floundering and flailing and
we’ve fallen and can’t get up.”)
Oh and for you history buffs, the website lists
the negotiations schedule . . . for 2013!!!!
“Don’t spit in my face and tell me it’s raining” ~
Yiddish saying
The Machinists and their supporters keep telling
us how awful things are at Delta and how dumb we are if we don’t believe them.
They truth is, it’s the IAM and their so-called “activists” that keep spitting
in our collective face. The second part of that argument is that the IAM will
come riding in to rescue us. But the fact of the matter is that if IAM is voted
in, all they will continue to do is spit in our face and tell us how awful
things are. For evidence of that, just spend a few minutes on a real live IAM
negotiations website for flight attendants they actually represent: www.iamoneuniononevoice.org
And while you’re there, ask yourself this very
simple and very profound question: “If IAM can’t negotiate an update to an
existing flight attendant contract in five years’ time, how dumb would WE be to
believe that they could negotiate a contract from scratch at Delta in four or
five months?
Sincerely,
Jose Arturo Ibarra
