Monday, October 6, 2014

CWA-AFA Membership


Despite the hysterical rhetoric of the past several years, wherein the CWA, most shrilly amongst all the labor organizations in the United States, decried the declining lack of union membership as the chief reason for the gutting of the nation’s middle class, and its attendant erosion of wealth in pursuit of the ill-defined “American dream,” the CWA itself has seemingly reversed that trend in one fell sweep and has positioned itself to be in the vanguard of organized labor’s resurgence in the American economic landscape.


Indeed, the AFA’s constant assertion that they were "part of the 700,000-member strong Communications Workers of America (CWA)” was always suspect since as recently as FY2012-2013, total reported membership at the CWA was 475,144.  If the 40,963 agency fee payers – Ellis objectors – who are forced to pay a service charge as a condition of their employment are counted in the total, the number still only rises to 516,077.  But, by the report’s own admission, and the Department of Labor’s standards, ”Agency Fee Payers are not considered members of the labor organization,” so, in the interest of honest and complete disclosure, 475,114 members is the most the CWA could lay claim to – nowhere near the 700,000 figure the AFA flight attendant sector boasted.


But what a difference a year makes, and, in spite of the barrage of dire reports about declining union membership splashed across expensive CWA newsletters, suddenly 475,114 members in FY2012-2013 is 623,020 in FY2013-2014, 666,373 (nearly the 700,000 the flight attendant sector claims), if agency fee payers, who are not considered members of the labor organization, are counted.  That, of course, is beside the point – the CWA flight attendants finally have their numbers.  And that, in a nutshell, is CWA flight attendant accounting at its best – never mind the truth, bend the numbers until they match the reality the exists in the tortured minds of AFA leadership.


Where is the credit, then, to be given for this miraculous 31% jump in union membership, at a time when the CWA, by its own repeated admission, sees union participation in this country in dangerous freefall?  Have the CWA-AFA flight attendants finally gotten Delta Airlines, after four attempts and millions of dollars of United Airlines dues money wasted in pursuit of the elusive white whale, while United attendants themselves still languish under the 1996 terms of Kevin Lump-sum’s enduring legacy of arrogance and contractual incompetence and idiocy?  Was there a surreptitious merger or integration with another labor union that flew under the radar, so as not to further ruffle the feathers and damage the fragile egos of the AFA flight attendant sector of the CWA, who still seem to think they are not only autonomous within the governance of the CWA, but indeed above many of the labor laws that only apply to other groups?


No, in much the same way that the CWA-AFA flight attendant sector still tries to lay claim to nineteen represented carriers and 60,000 members, the CWA itself has taken to including numbers that heretofore were unreported on annual LM-2 reports to further bolster their sagging fortunes and bruised egos.  Schedule 13 of each LM-2 report discloses membership status, and until this year that number was reported as regular members and agency fee payers.  But this year, the CWA has decided it is time to begin including RETIREES in the total membership figures, thereby burnishing what in reality is a substantial loss of numbers.  Masking truth does nothing to begin to resolve the issues that truly do need to be faced – rather it only serves to justify the six figure salaries and insurance and retirement benefits paid out to the faux executives in union management as well as union employees and retirees – benefits that in most cases far outstrip anything they are capable of negotiating on behalf of the employees they are PAID to represent. 

The real numbers can be found in the membership status section, schedule 13 of the report, and the only number that truly matters is the number of regular members – those members that are considered full members of the union, paying dues for “protection” and contract enforcement and voting on tentative agreements whenever the elephantine collective bargaining process gets around to producing one.  So while the CWA parent union has patted itself on the back and reported a whopping 31% percent increase, the real fact of the matter is a somber FIFTEEN PERCENT DECLINE in regular membership, from 475,114 in FY2012-2013 to 404,289 in FY2013-2014.


Another 52,240 retirees, designated as voting eligible, that are not part of the FY2012-2013 report are included in this year’s count along with no fewer than 166,491 retirees designated as non-voting, for a grand, if utterly misleading total of 623,020 CWA members.  Incidentally, when the retirees are designated as voting members of the union, it does not refer to the same voting rights as currently employed members.  Rather, retirees are part of councils that convene and have a voice at the biannual CWA conventions where officers and agenda items are voted upon. 

They are not directly involved with the daily activities of contract enforcement nor live under the terms of collective bargaining agreements BECAUSE THEY ARE RETIRED! The fact that they are included here as members, as a way for the CWA to claim more active, working members than they really have serves only to mask the very real and steadily dwindling influence of the parent union, upon whose vast economic and political resources the flight attendants were told they could rely as a result of the 2003 merger with the CWA – a paternalistic relationship that the AFA flight attendant sector goes to great length to deny exists on a daily basis, often going so far as to intimate they are still an independent and autonomous group within the CWA sector structure.

Of course, to those who have been watching the CWA flight attendant sector conduct business as it has for the past forty years, such obfuscation is nothing new and the fact they have linked their fortunes to those of a larger organization that willfully engages in similarly deceptive practices should be no surprise.  Despite union management’s best efforts to the contrary numbers do not lie, and the fact that the CWA flight attendants have finally decided to comply with federal labor law and file individual financial statements for each and every LEC and MEC under the CWA umbrella, WORKING flight attendants can once again examine each statement in detail and hold the few elected, but mostly appointed officers and “leaders” accountable for the hard earned money they steal as recompense for the “protection” they ostensibly provide.


 (It is only since the FACC has been asking why the CWA flight attendant sector, in apparent violation of Department of Labor regulations, has never reported each council’s individual finances that the sector has begun reporting their finances separately from the parent union – something that it should have been doing all along rather than hiding their finances within the opacity of the CWA parent financial statement).


But misleading membership numbers at the parent union level are only the beginning – much more waits to be revealed at the sector, MEC and local council levels across every airline held captive by the CWA-AFA - not the least of which is the egregious sums of money joint negotiating committee members at United Airlines have seen fit to take while contract talks languish in a limbo of excuse-making and blame, despite the corporate double speak gibberish of new beginnings, fresh directions, IBBs, and SMEs.    


Of course, as the CAL and CMI MECs ramp up talks to nail down improvements and continued protections in their IAM negotiated CBAs, as is THEIR RIGHT AND THEIR RESPONSIBILITY, the posturing and hysterical rhetoric from the UAL MEC will reach new and dizzying heights of nonsense, so now is the perfect time to show every WORKING flight attendant exactly what this theatre costs. 


After all, October 2014 marks the fourth anniversary of the legal, financial, and regulatory close of the United/Continental merger – halfway to the eight years it took the CWA-AFA to fumble their way to a joint contract for America West and US Airways.  This circus is just getting started!



 

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