Sep 14, 2018 | Airlines, Departments, Featured, Home, MNPL, United
New Jersey Machinists Fight Proposed $20 Million Tax Hike.
Members of Local 914 based at Newark Liberty Airport (EWR) descended on New Jersey’s State House in Trenton to express their opposition to a proposed bill that targets their employer, United Airlines, for an increase in jet fuel taxes. The legislation, S-2892, sponsored by NJ State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, seeks to finance the expansion of rail service into the airport. The proposal could increase the tax burden on the airline by $20 million dollars. According to company spokespersons, the costs could prompt the company to take emergency measures to mitigate costs.
United spokesman Sean Williams warned of a “substantial risk of causing costs to go up on passengers” and that the new tax burden could possibly mean changes to routes. “I mean, something has to give here.”
While the bill does not explicitly mention United, it is drafted to only apply to any airline that carries over 8 million passengers a year. As United is the only airline operating at EWR that matches that description, the tax increase would only impact the carrier. This drastic increase in costs to United threatens the jobs of almost 3,000 IAM District 141 members who work in Customer Service, Fleet Service, and Stores.
Ines Garcia-Keim, Local 914 Legislative Director and President of the NJ State Council of Machinists, testified at the Senate Transportation Committee hearing: “Simply stated, higher taxes on jet fuel would significantly drive up costs and will have a negative impact on our customers and our jobs. This proposed legislation unfairly targets our company.”
IAM Members and Officers from District 15, Local 447 and from the NJ State Council of Machinists were also present in solidarity in the hearing room.
The Senate committee voted 3-2 to move the bill, but 3 senators voiced concerns that they said would be addressed in the general session.
Bill Gula, President of Local 914, said: “The Fighting Machinists were in full force in Trenton today. We will stay in this fight until the New Jersey Legislature recognizes that any threat to the security of our jobs will not stand.”
All union-directed political action defending the interests of airline employees and IAM members is funded entirely through voluntary contributions to the Machinists Non-Partisan League. To learn more about how you can get involved, contact IAM141 Legislative Director, David Roderick, or visit the MNPL page to contribute today.
Sep 13, 2018 | Airlines, American, Departments, Featured, Home, Organizing, The Association
Many of you have read the Special Jetwire issued by American Airlines regarding our negotiations. If you don’t read anything else in this bulletin, read this:
Beware of any negotiations propaganda issued by the Company. It contains partial examples, misleading statements and outright wrong information.
It is true that your negotiating team has reached tentative agreements on many good improvements for our joint collective bargaining agreements. However, American has not just given those out of the kindness of their heart – they were hard won by the tenacity of your negotiators and, most importantly, you deserve them!
American paints the picture that all you will ever need is right there in their proposal just for the taking. What they don’t tell you is that you would have to agree to concede vast amounts of work you are doing today. You would give up the better and less costly healthcare options ALREADY WON AND PAID FOR through bankruptcy. You would suffer less in retirement value that already exists in our Association and you would have to take less than other American Airlines employee groups. And, you would have to agree to wages that can fall below industry standards during the life of the agreement.
Things American will not tell you is that they demand to allow unlimited fleet work performed today to shift to vendors. They want you to concede scheduled line maintenance work by almost doubling the amount of that work performed outside of the United States from what is done today. They want overhaul maintenance to concede over 2,200 jobs during the life of the agreement. And, they want to shrink the facilities maintenance work to a mere skeleton of what the Association performs today.
Sisters and Brothers, these are CONCESSIONS!
Our members invested in our airlines through our bankruptcy contributions. We are the reason these carriers and this management were able to merge American Airlines and US Airways into the biggest airline in the world. It is now a carrier that is more profitable than it has been in its entire combined past history. It is an airline predicted to never lose money again. We deserve to keep what we bring to the table today in the form of the work we do, the benefits we have and the security we need.
Our proposals seek to allow our membership to grow as the Company grows. We deserve to share in the prosperity we make. We deserve to be rewarded for our sacrifices. Our proposals are reasonable and don’t overreach.
To the contrary, American has chosen this time to be greedy and demand that we continue to give back. They believe they can bribe us into concessions we would have to live with for the rest of our careers.
To that we say, hell no!
One more thing – American can begin the early out today. There is no need to wait.
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Michael G. Klemm
President/Directing General Chair
District Lodge 141
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Dave Supplee
President/Directing General Chair
District Lodge 142
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Sep 12, 2018 | Departments, Education
The following is the current training schedule for September 2018.
Wednesday 9/12
SAT, Shop Steward Training
Monday-Tuesday, 9/17+18
Guam, Shop Steward Training
Wednesday 9/19
Guam, Local Lodge Officer Training
Wednesday 9/26
SJC, Shop Steward Training
For more information please contact Mac McGovern, Director of Education at mac@iam141.org or 570-350-0497
Aug 31, 2018 | Community Service, Departments, Events, Featured, Home
Some of the best people work in unions.
Nestled about five minutes from Charlotte Douglas International Airport lies Renaissance West STEAM Academy. (“Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math”) An unlikely addition to the low-income section of Charlotte where it’s located, Renaissance West Academy seeks to reach some of the most at-risk students in the area – right in the neighborhoods they call home.
For many of the K-6 students, the meals they get at school are the only meals they get all day. Every student at Renaissance West STEAM Academy qualifies for the school’s free lunch program. Plastic food bins donated by IAM Victory Lodge 1725 in Charlotte are filled throughout the week with donations for families who take them home over the weekend.
Despite the many challenges they face, however, the students at Renaissance Academy are thriving. Much of this success is due to the toughness and resilience of the kids, but the whole community has joined to support the school’s goals. Faith-based networks, city agencies, and community groups all play a role, with union activists leading the way.
When students at Renaissance West STEAM Academy head to class this week, they will be sporting brand new book bags, each one emblazoned with the IAM emblem and stuffed with school supplies. The bright red drawstring bags and supplies were gifted to the kids thanks to an ambitious donation drive spearheaded by Community Activist and Charlotte’s Victory Lodge 1725 Recording Secretary Helena Thornton.
A long-time supporter of the students at Renaissance West, Helena knew first-hand how great the need for school supplies was. She first got involved at Renaissance West when the President of Victory Lodge 1725 Mike Jones encouraged her and others to volunteer. The young students nicknamed her “Miss Lady.”
Helena Thornton. Photo courtesy of Louis Gilmore, Photographer for Victory Lodge Local 1725 CLT
Helena teamed up with Renae Miller, the Chairwoman of the Women’s and Human Rights Committee at Victory Lodge 1725. The two of them came up with a plan to make sure that the students would start off the school year well-prepared, with the confidence and dignity that comes with having everything they need for class.
But, which students would get the bags and supplies? It didn’t seem fair to set up some kids with new bags and leave others out, since every student at Renaissance West faces hardships.
For Helena, the answer was clear: Everyone would get a bag. And while it didn’t seem possible for her small local lodge to buy the more than 500 book bags they would need, she upped the ante and also planned to stuff them with enough supplies to get each student outfitted for the classroom.
Helena has been employed at American Airlines for 12 years, and for 9 of those years she has been a union activist. After becoming a Shop Steward, and later Women’s Committee Chair, she became Local 1725 Recording Secretary back in May 2015 and was elected to her first full term this year. She knows how to take on a project, even one as big as this one.
The first calls Helena and Renae made were to District 141. After that, things began falling into place. Donations from the District combined with contributions from the Obie O’Brien Local Lodge 1776 in Philadelphia, and even more donations from members covered the cost of having the bags made.
Getting the school supplies, however, was proving to be tougher than expected. It was at that point that Helena got a phone call from IAM Transportation General Vice President Sito Pantoja.
“That was a surprise!” Helena said, laughing. “My phone rings out of the blue, and suddenly I’m talking to Sito Pantoja.”
“But, he was very thoughtful, and he asked me what we needed, and he told me that he would help. And, he sure did!” A few days after his phone call, Helena got six heavy boxes full of supplies, many of them displaying the IAM emblem just as the bags were. “We got pencils, rulers… more than 400 packs of index cards…” Helena struggled to recall everything that the students reaped from that single donation. “It was a huge help. Without his donations, I’m not sure how we would have reached our goal.”
After finally collecting everything needed, Helena rounded up volunteers, friends and family to help pack the bags. “We started bagging, bag after bag. We had entire families packing bags for three straight days. After the first day, we packed about 250 bags. We had 700 notebooks, plus pencils, crayons, wipes, napkins, hand sanitizers. We made sure that the little kids had the sanitizers. For the older kids we focused more on the notebooks, the pencils, the markers.”
“After I finished, I was exhausted. I had never seen so many pencils. We had 4000 pencils!”
When it was all done, all 550 students at Renaissance West STEAM Academy had the supplies they needed to start the school year, all packed into a brand-new, bright red book bag proudly emblazoned with the IAM logo. Not only that, but all of the school’s 27 teachers had book bags as well, stuffed with extra supplies for the kids.
It was then that the magnitude of the job became apparent. “I didn’t realize what we had done until I saw kid after kid with the red bags. I was in tears,” Helena said.
“These kids need somebody to show them that they are important. They need to be able to say ‘somebody’s there for me.'”
If you are a member of Victory Lodge 1725 in Charlotte and would like to volunteer for the next big project, contact Helena Thornton at calhounh95@yahoo.com.
