Nov 14, 2019 | Home, Organizing, Uncategorized
Outsourcing is one of the leading causes of unemployment in America and a major driver of wage stagnation. But now, union members at Alaska Airlines have just voted to approve a deal that will end the practice for some 5,000 workers at the carrier.
In 2005, while Alaska Airlines was in the midst of a frenzied effort to boost shareholder returns, executives made one of the most ill-advised moves in the carrier’s history. They decided to outsource hundreds of unionized baggage handlers at Sea-Tac Airport in Seattle, Washington.
Investors hailed the decision, thinking it would generate higher profits. It didn’t.
The company that Alaska entrusted to handle ramp work, Menzies, was notoriously plagued with incompetent management and high turnover rates. To save money, the company cut corners on training and barely bothered to provide safety equipment to employees.
Within months, poorly staffed and under trained contract workers had ripped a foot-long hole in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines jet with a belt loader. The accident was not reported, and the MD-80 aircraft carrying 140 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing en route to Burbank, California.
Another contracted employee fell asleep in a baggage compartment and woke up after that plane had taken off, triggering additional bad press for the airline. Then last August, a contracted employee at Horizon Air, an Alaskan subsidiary, took a Bombardier Q400 for a joyride over Puget Sound, performing stunts and barrel rolls before he ran out of fuel and crashed the aircraft near Sea-Tac. Fortunately, no one was injured on the ground in that incident.
Outsourcing had proved to be a bad investment.
Alaska Airlines workers responded by organizing the Menzies contractors into their union, and by lobbying for a $15/hour minimum wage at Sea-Tac. They calculated that these moves would completely eliminate any chance of a financial reward for the company because of outsourcing.
In 2017, facing labor unrest, legal actions, and persistent organized lobbying by union members, Alaska Airlines reversed course and fired Menzies. The work was awarded to Machinist Union-represented McGee Air Services.
For about 900 employees at Menzies, the news came as a shock. However, McGee representatives made it clear to the Menzies employees that they would not be fired or summarily laid-off. They would all be given the opportunity to become unionized workers at McGee. With unionization, they would also all get guaranteed flight benefits, better health insurance, and union-negotiated bonuses.
The president of McGee, Dean DuVall met with the former Menzies employees and welcomed them into their new company. “They were quiet at first, in shock, and processing. Then, as the meeting broke up, they were engaged and eager to talk to us.” DuVall told the Seattle Times.
To its credit, the airline seems to have learned some valuable lessons from its disastrous decision to play around with outsourcing. The tentative deal struck with union negotiators this month will prohibit the outsourcing of union work at Alaska Airlines.
The Machinists Union has virtually eliminated outsourcing for the 40k+ members of the union in the airline industry. Ramp workers took United Airlines before Federal Arbitrators over a scheme to outsource 22 control tower positions. In that case, the union made it all but impossible for the carrier to outsource any union job at United ever again.
At American Airlines, the Machinists Union allied with the TWU to prevent the outsourcing of work to overseas vendors. That fight became so heated that the airline has seen it’s stock market performance sag over the issue.
Besides ending outsourcing for covered members, the Alaska agreement will increase base wages by a historic 14%, on average, starting the same day that it is signed. It will also provide a mechanism to ensure that wages always keep pace with the rest of the industry, reduce health insurance costs, increase company-sponsored retirement benefits, and increase premium and shift differentials by up to 20 percent, among other improvements.
“I thank IAM Members at Alaska Airlines for the unity and solidarity they demonstrated throughout this process,” said IAM General Vice President Sito Pantoja. “It’s because of that unity that the negotiating committee was able to achieve the notable gains in these agreements.”
“I congratulate the IAM Negotiating Committee on a job well done, said IAM District 142 President and Directing General Chairman Dave Supplee. “IAM members at Alaska Airlines can be proud of these agreements, especially the prohibition on outsourcing work. IAM Members spoke loud and clear that their futures needed to be secure, and this agreement is a solid step in the right direction.”
While historic for Alaska Airlines, the new agreement could have even bigger ramifications for other airlines.
“Alaska Airlines is an almost perfect twin to JetBlue,” said Victor Hernandez, an Assistant General Chair at the Machinists Union. “JetBlue Ground Ops Crewmembers are getting involved and working to join the IAM,” he said. “They’re talking to our organizers about the Alaska contract right now, and they like what they see.”
The Machinists Union is the largest Aerospace and Transportation Union on earth and includes approximately 5,000 Clerical, Office, Passenger Service, Reservations, Ramp and Stores employees at Alaska Airlines.
Nov 10, 2019 | Airlines, Departments, Featured, Home, United
A Ramp Services Employee at United received $21,993 in back pay after managers refused to accept repeated notes from doctors allowing him to return to work.
United Supervisors ordered Reno-based Ramp Agent Rich Elliott to get his hearing checked after he didn’t immediately answer his radio. A series of missteps by managers kept him out of work for five months. In October, Rich got a check from United for almost $22,000 in back pay. Rich says that he gets a lot of calls for shop steward work now.
Working with his union, Rich Elliott was able to get back to work, and collected back pay, something that lawyers did not think would be possible in Nevada, a “Right-to-Work” state.
Elliott, a United Airlines employee and IAM Local 1781 Shop Steward, was working a flight in mid-March when he missed a radio call from his supervisor.
The combination of loud jet engines and heavy equipment, and the requirement to always wear hearing protection, makes it difficult to hear well while working on an airport ramp. Missing a radio call is not uncommon. However, in this case, a missed radio call cost United thousands of dollars and sent Rich Elliot home for nearly half a year.
Elliott explained to his supervisor that he did not hear the radio call because his radio was not at top volume and he was wearing earplugs and earmuffs for hearing protection. Rather than accept that explanation, the supervisor met with United Station Managers and, as a group, they demanded that he go to an on-site medical clinic to have his hearing checked.
Elliott had his hearing checked the next day. The clinic found no serious injury or impairment, and authorized him to return to work immediately.
For reasons not entirely clear, United managers in Reno refused to accept the clinic’s recommendation and removed him from his work schedule until more medical tests could be performed. United managers turned in paperwork for workers’ compensation that was filled out incorrectly or was incomplete, delaying the process further.
For the next five months, managers at United refused to allow Elliott to go back to his job on the RNO ramp, despite one doctor after another certifying his return to work. Repeatedly, medical professionals declared that he was fine to return to his job, and each time United management either over-ruled the doctors and demanded more tests or claimed to have lost his paperwork. Elliot spent weeks waiting for someone from the airline to return his phone calls to tell him how he could return to active duty.
As the weeks dragged on, Elliott lost his company-offered health insurance, which made it much more difficult to meet the increasingly elaborate hurdles the company was imposing on him before he could get back to his job. Busy medical specialists scheduled expensive MRIs and other tests for dates that were weeks into the future, long after paychecks stopped coming in. Rich was denied a home loan because he didn’t have a consistent income. When payments began stacking up, he asked about back pay. A lawyer told him that Nevada’s Right to Work laws would make it nearly impossible to win much of anything in court.
Elliott, a longtime union activist with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, filed a grievance against United as soon as he missed his first paycheck. His case was picked up by his IAM Committeeman, Yusuf Wyatt, who very quickly advanced it to Olu Ajetomobi, a District 141 Representative.
“This was a very stressful time. I was getting no contact from the company. I never knew where I stood,” Elliot said.
Making matters worse, managers stripped him of the security badges he needed to access the secure areas of the airport where he worked. The badges need to be updated regularly and are automatically deactivated if they are not used. Elliott’s badges had gone unused for so long that they were due to be both updated and deactivated. The badging issue presented another complication that could extend his outage by six more weeks.
“I was so fortunate to have my union behind me,” Elliott said. “Yusaf helped me fill out the legal forms and the union grievances. I was calling Olu just about every day. I would go weeks without any news from Human Resources, but Olu would always call me back, talk me through the process, and he just helped. I really appreciated that.”
Rich Elliott is no pushover when it comes to facing managers. He served as a union Grievance Committeeman for six years, plus a few more as Shop Steward. He has gone toe-to-toe with managers on many occasions, and won many grievances of his own over the years. But, in this case, he followed the maxim “A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.” The company was stonewalling him, and he needed reinforcements. “I can’t thank these people enough,” Elliott said of his co-workers and union reps that stood up for him. “Chris Lusk, our Local Committee Chairman, Yusuf Wyatt our Committeeman, and Olu… it was just too much for one person to try to do alone.”
In early August, the company began taking steps to resolve the situation. “I don’t know what Olu and my Union Reps were saying to them, but the company all of a sudden started being real nice to me. Human Resources was telling me that they would advocate for me, and things like that. I got back to work, but I never thought that I would get paid for all that time I was out,” Elliott said. “Luckily, Olu was working on that, too.”
Olu Ajetomobi, a Machinists Union District 141 Assistant General Chairman, explained that there are good reasons for ramp workers to find a civil solution instead of rushing into a courtroom.
“In a case like this, we work with trial attorneys and legal experts, but Nevada law is not always worker friendly. We weren’t finding legal guidance telling us we were going to be able to get back pay in a reasonable amount of time, if we were ever able to get any back pay at all,” Olu said. “Fortunately, the Human Resources Department at United agreed to grant us back pay without going to court. I think that can be considered a win for everyone involved.”
On October 17, two months after he returned to work, Elliott got a check for almost $22,000 in back pay. “I had written it off,” Elliot says. “Nevada is a Right to Work state, and even my lawyer was telling me I had no chance in court. This was a decision that had been made after going through the union grievance process. I probably never would have been paid for that five months if I had gone after it in court. As a union, we won!”
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Nov 1, 2019 | Airlines, American, Departments, Featured, Home, Organizing, The Association
Negotiations continued in Washington, D.C. this week, with little movement from the company being made towards completed tentative agreements. In light of the unfortunate lack of progress, the Executive Committee is considering next steps and an appropriate response.
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Nov 1, 2019 | Departments, EAP, Helping Hands, Home
November focuses on Caregivers health. Many of our members are caregivers for parents, older (adult) children or friends, neighbors, etc. Being a caregiver takes a lot of energy and can be exhausting. The issue addresses good health for caregivers and some resources that can help ease the burden of having to take care of someone.
Winter is upon us – please take care of yourselves! You are all caregivers – the suggestions for taking care of yourself are for you!
I am grateful for each one of you and the care that you give to others!
Bryan,
Bryan Hutchinson, M.S.
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