It has been more than two years since the CWA-afa won the
representation election to the collective detriment of the flight attendant
work group at United Continental. But rather
than immediately commencing joint
contract talks as ALPA did for the pilot group, the UAL MEC and international
officers instead chose to saddle s-United attendants with a six year contract
as part of the “stepping stone” approach to improvements to the three current
CBA’s. Such an approach, it was claimed,
would lay the groundwork for, among other things, a $64.88 per hour top wage
rate, while still retaining whatever inefficiencies and costly provisions of
the CWA-afa CBA that the UAL MEC deems the s-United work force wants as a result of
a series of fraudulent surveys skewed to illicit certain responses.
The latest joint negotiating committee update has gone so
far as to criticize other labor groups at United Continental for quick
resolutions to their contracts and who “are now experiencing difficulty regarding
the interpretation of new Contract language on any number of issues.” Such rationalization for the onerous and delay
prone approach to everything the CWA-afa flight attendants have done in their past
and continue to do as current contract negotiations play out here and elsewhere
is such a magnificent display of the pretzel logic that is part and parcel of
everything the CWA-afa flight attendants do, that it is impossible to grasp and
fully appreciate the self denial and shameless self promotion necessary to
write and utter such nonsense with a straight face.
Echoing Sharon McKarcher’s drivel distributed as part of the
Coconut
Wireless newsletter (s-UA HNL) during the 2012 Board of Directors meeting flight
attendants are reminded that “more often than not, negotiations…begin at
a slower pace and gain momentum over time.”
But immediately thereafter, while we are told that lengthy
negotiations are necessary because “quick and easy (is) not what we’re after,”
suddenly, “long negotiation periods can benefit management, because the longer
the time before accepting improvement in the Contract, the longer they get to
go without paying for those improvements…Management hopes that they can stall
us into agreeing to settle for less.”
So in the beautifully duplicitous manner that the CWA-afa flight
attendants have honed to a fine art, in one sentence, “quick and easy” contract
resolutions are anathema to flight attendant “leadership,” and , indeed, have
led to trouble for the other groups who have settled relatively quickly. But in the same breath, it is then claimed
that “long
negotiation periods…benefit management” because lengthy negotiations
also preclude the need for companies to absorb the extra cost associated with improvements.
But airline managements across the country have little to
worry about here, since the CWA-afa has NEVER managed to negotiate anything
approaching real value when it comes to contractual “improvements,” chief among
them being retroactive pay. Retroactive
pay is meant to be a punitive incentive for efficient negotiations by avoiding
a large pay out upon ratification of a contract well past its amendable date
but which the CWA-afa has consistently bargained away for pennies on the dollar.
Underpinned by two different operating philosophies, the CAL
and CMI CBAs stand in stark contrast to the overwrought, micromanaged CWA-afa CBA,
but it is the egos of the three negotiating team members for s-United who have
defined in their minds what is “management’s terms” and what is
theirs. From the ten year debacle of a
contract Kevin Lump-sum negotiated in the mid 1990s which has hamstrung
s-United flight attendants’ economic well being for the last two decades, to
Jack Kande’s and Greg Davidowitch’s Swiss cheese “stepping stone” contract of 2012-2016, the
three caballeros have something to prove to themselves and one another, and
whether that benefits s-United attendants in the long run or not is of
secondary concern.
The fact remains that it is the CAL CBA that will remain
standing in some slightly altered form after all is said and done, and s-United
attendants in the meantime will continue to be denied the hourly wage rate
enjoyed by their counterparts on the CAL/CMI side while the s-United
negotiating committee play acts for the next several years. The difference
between the work groups, especially ALPA, that have come to terms with the new
United management, despite any perceived nuisances or inconvenience that may
arise “regarding the interpretation of new Contract language,” is
that job security protections are now in place for everyone but s-United
attendants.
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