Another Independent Union wins!

 Congratulations to the U.S. based flight attendants of Norwegian who, on August 10th, won an NMB Representation Election for their INDEPENDENT UNION, the NCCA! 
Stay tuned for more news about other Flight Attendant Independent Union movements in the industry coming in our next newsletter. Subscribe to the FACC Newsletter......NOW!

 

http://cabinassociation.org/

 


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We Call for Resignations........AGAIN!

Few organizations are as adept at turning a blind eye to the truth or engage in revisionist history as proficiently as the afa-CWA flight attendants do, and it continues unabated here.  It was precisely at that point in company history – six months before the legal close of the merger in October 2010 - that the s-UA MEC sealed the fate of s-UAL attendants and set up the divisive conflict that is only now ramping up.  This is a conflict the AFA International Office and the UAL MEC have planned, and wanted, since winning the representation vote in June 2011.  S-CAL flight attendants would do well to ALWAYS keep in mind that it was never enough for them to merely win the representation vote.

Rather, they wanted then and continue now to try to expand their own confrontational dysfunction to the CAL work force as a substitute for the efficient and decisive representation they simply CANNOT provide.  In other words, Nelson and the UAL MEC see themselves as the rightful heirs to represent ALL FLIGHT ATTENDANTS at the combined United Airlines – the current CAL MEC is an obstacle and impediment to their plans and the fact that the current and past CAL officers have enjoyed the success they have thus far, and will continue to enjoy as they and the CMI MEC  perhaps begin Section 6 negotiations for their own contracts, is anathema to an organization which sells delay and frustration as “representation.” 

It is time for the s-United JNC and MEC Officers to step down.  They have proven time and again to be incapable of delivering on promises made to the membership, and have done nothing to “reach across the aisle” to our CAL brothers and sisters in order to promote an expeditious conclusion to joint contract negotiations.  Instead they have begun to lay the groundwork, with the same tired rhetoric they have used for thirty years, for conflict and contentiousness, thereby ensuring a needlessly protracted period of combined contract negotiations. This does nothing to further the interests of WORKING s-United flight attendants.  It does however guarantee continued income and union employment for officers while engaging in their “master plan” of further organizing attempts at Delta and initiating a raid on APFA with the help of ex-USAir flight attendants.

The flight attendants of s-United Airlines are unwilling to subsidize the continued employment and substandard results that have characterized this JNC and MEC leadership.  Since WORKING flight attendants are prohibited from exercising their right of choice in their elected leaders beyond the local level, we demand of our LEC Presidents that they make it known to the MEC and International President Sara Nelson that the s-UA membership hereby calls for the immediate removal of Kevin Lum, Jack Kande and Ken Diaz from the current JNC. 

The continued disparity in pay, and lack of scheduling flexibility that the s-UA MEC deems acceptable for s-United attendants to endure for another five years of NMB Mediation while they play political games with WORKING flight attendants’ livelihoods is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated.  Any LEC President unwilling to support this petition of the UAL MEC will, in turn be subject to a grass roots recall effort, since it will then be abundantly clear that their political aspirations and continued union employment are more important than what real, WORKING flight attendants demand.

s-United leadership no longer deserves the privilege of representing the WORKING flight attendants at United Airlines, and we will no longer be held hostage to personal and political ambitions and agendas of the AFA leadership. At this point, ALL WORKING FLIGHT ATTENDANTS at the combined United Airlines have surely come to the realization that there is only one solution to the problem that is the afa-CWA and will  undoubtedly choose to elect their own INDEPENDENT UNION, the UFAA!

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 As a result of having capitalized yet again on the consistently gullible and insensate work force at s-UAL to unthinkingly follow the dogmatic AFA old guard while they thrash and flail about in Polly the Parrot costumes on picket lines with the desperate urgency of a drowning man grasping at straws and making excuses for their consistently directionless and inept handling of contract negotiations, the s-UA JNC have only managed to cost the membership the potential of a combined contract on the July 23rd target date, and $1.5 million dollars in lost revenue from the  Company as a result of the termination of the Protocol Agreement between the Company and Unions. 

Our sources tell us the simple fact remains incontrovertible: the s-UA JNC , in fear of being replaced by their own LEC Presidents over their failures at the negotiating table and facing the end of their union employment, went crawling to their friend and co-conspirator, afa International President Sara Nelson, to help save them. Kevin Lum,  Jack Kande, Ken Diaz and Sara Nelson have personally cost s-UA flight attendants millions of dollars in lost potential income as they continue to deny s-UA f/a’s the dignity of personal choice for no other reason than their continued employment at the MEC and International level. Thusly enabling them to follow Nelson’s master plan of merging the MEC’s at UAL and getting rid of the CAL MEC once and for all; raiding APFA at American Airlines with the help of former AFA f/a’s at USAir; and once again making another organizing attempt at Delta. 

The latest EBOD back room decision to strip s-CAL flight attendants in SFO of the choice to take control of their own future, free from the coercion, intimidation and harassment of the AFA International Office and their fawners at the s-UA MEC, is another in a long line of actions designed to keep ALL United flight attendants in ignorance, misery and under the yoke of the AFA oligarchy.

Days of Action, parading around in Polly the Parrot costumes waving picket signs, parrot bag tags, red pins, creating vile websites and videos, and other myriad displays of infantile petulance do nothing but show the afa-CWA flight attendants’ true colors as an ultimately hollow and spineless front for career opportunists and hack wannabe politicians at the s-UA JNC, s-UA MEC and the highest levels of the organization at the AFA International Office. They are a contentious, dysfunctional group of whining, humorless idiots, who have inflicted economic harm on the flight attendant profession since the day they decided they should be THE one and only voice for flight attendants in this country and the membership be damned.

We welcome an Independent Union movement as the ONLY viable alternative to the altogether flawed and unfit “representation” embodied by the afa-CWA. We, the membership, are their employers, not their servants, and the time has come for a change.

 

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Reform NOT Conform

 It's what we've always said, the power and leverage at the bargaining table lies in the membership that is given the right to vote. No picketing, pins, ribbons or any other kind of trinkets will ever garner respect from the company. In fact the opposite is true. Declaring war against the company without an army and no ammunition results in creating a civil war amongst the very membership you need to unite.   

The JNC complains........"the company doesn't respect us"........well why should they? Respect?!? s-UA afa does not know the meaning of the word. Makes one wonder what ulterior motive they have in being part of the negotiations. Perhaps to stay off the airplane aisle and feather bed their own Union careers.

The members of this JNC are abject failures and  for reasons mentioned above should recuse themselves from further talks immediately. Baring such action the membership should insist their LECP's call for their immediate removal. 

After all this time what do flight attendants get?? Another pin to wear?!?
Geesh..............

Maybe it really is time the Combined  United flight attendants stood up for themselves and formed an Independent Union!

 
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About That Contract.......

The CAL and CMI MECs are coming to an important crossroads and they must NOT let this moment pass. Both CAL and CMI contracts became amendable at the end of December 2014, and should consider that it is their RIGHT and RESPONSIBILITY to pursue Section 6 negotiations with company management to conclude another two year agreement that will bring a merged CAL/CMI entity in line with s-UAL’s attendants’ 2016 amendable date.

Read that again and ponder why in the name of common sense s-UAL “leadership” would have opted for yet another overlong contract period (SIX YEARS from the 2010 amendable date of the last contract).  S-CAL and CMI leadership, understanding the volatile and changing landscape of the merging entity, chose instead for short term interim contracts to allow their negotiators to adjust accordingly for the overall benefit of s-CAL attendants.  S-CAL and CMI attendants, whose contracts are similar, would do well, for the continued protection of their respective work forces to consider a merge NOW.  After all, LOA 25 in the current CAL contract only provides no furlough protection for flight attendants “on the Continental System Seniority List as of the date of ratification of this July 13, 2012 – December 31, 2014 Agreement.”   

Continental has hired, and continues to hire, flight attendants since the current CAL contract was ratified and they deserve the same protection the IAM had the foresight to negotiate on behalf of CAL attendants prior to the representation vote in 2011. CMI attendants would benefit from this protection too if a joint contract with CAL were to be ratified.

What subsidiary CAL attendants must understand and remember above all else is that ratification of a 3 party joint contract, however far into the future that will probably be, is followed by an integration of seniority lists, and the s-UAL work force is, for the most part, SIGNIFICANTLY SENIOR TO THE CAL GROUP.  Once integrated, any future furloughs, forced leaves, and base displacements would be by seniority and disproportionately affect the CAL attendants.  It would be in every CAL attendants’ best interest to press their leadership for an immediate commencement and rapid conclusion to joint contract talks with their CMI counterparts – they will be better protected and positioned for the future because of it.

S-UAL attendants are accustomed to lengthy periods of go-nowhere negotiations and empty promises (e.g. retroactive pay that has NEVER been successfully negotiated on behalf of s-UAL attendants, thereby forfeiting THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in lost income), and it would set a terrible precedent if CAL attendants are forced to endure the chicanery and political antics s-UAL attendants have come to know and love – it gives them ample fodder to pursue their foremost passion at work – COMPLAINT, which s-UAL “leadership” heartily encourages.

CAL and CMI attendants would already be owed retroactive pay for new contracts with top of the scale rates that should equal American’s recently concluded joint contract process – it is up to current CAL leadership to press the issue and do what’s right for its membership. If S-CAL is forced to wait for the next five or six years that some believe it will realistically take to get a joint contract with s-UAL, they will NEVER see true retroactive pay for the time and money that s-UAL “leadership” will lose for them while they grandstand and posture for their NON-WORKING flight attendant peers in oh-so-important positions of power and prestige.

As the recent announcement about possible outsourcing of work at twenty-eight UA line stations demonstrates, events unfold rapidly, and what appears secure and guaranteed today is anything but, and the flight attendant group is NOT EXEMEPT. Many believe It is of paramount importance that s-CAL and CMI leadership secure a new interim MERGED agreement to pay and protect their groups NOW!  The additional benefit to WORKING flight attendants will be the elimination of administrative and managerial overlap that currently exists with both a CAL and CMI MEC basically overseeing the same contract.  While GUM based flight attendants will continue to have their local leadership, they will benefit from the lower costs and wage savings that will result from a single MEC overseeing the affairs of the newly combined work force.

If the status quo continues, s-CAL and CMI attendants risk falling into the same morass of despair and economic deprivation that s-UAL flight attendants have long endured.

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