Socialist Action /October 1999
Teamster flight attendants dump company-Hoffa agreement
By CHARLES WALKER
"Wow! Northwest flight attendants really didn't like their contract
proposal! ... Dumped 69 percent to 31 percent. That's impressive!"
-IBT Vice President Chuck Mack
After the national carhaul and Anheuser-Busch contracts were ratified,
Teamsters President James Hoffa was looking for a hat trick with the ratification
of a proposed five-year pact covering nearly 11,000 flight attendants at
Northwest Airlines.
Hoffa said the deal was "an outstanding contract victory with unprecedented
wage, pension, and other improvements." Still, nearly seven in 10 workers
voted no, with 94 percent of those eligible to vote returning mail ballots.
The mainstream press played up the huge margin by which the Hoffa-recommended
contract had been shot down. But the more important story is the rank-and
file organizing and leadership that in June gave 99 percent of the ranks
the confidence to authorize the IBT to take them out on strike, and then
on Aug. 26 to tell both the airline bosses and the Hoffa regime to take
their deal and shove it.
It had to be a tough choice for the ranks to make, if only because they
haven't had a raise since 1988. Furthermore, they are under the oppressive
Railway Labor Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation designed to swindle
rail workers, which now also swindles airline workers.
The ranks' unity and determination didn't just fall out of the sky. Since
1987, flight attendants have been building a rank-and-file movement to give
them an practical alternative to their high-flying bosses and Teamster bureaucrats.
The background to the flight attendants' long fight was recently related
in Gridrunner, an online newsletter, by Ashley McNeely, a full-time representative
of Flight Attendants Local Union 2000 and a national leader of Teamsters
for a Democratic Union (TDU), a militant rank-and-file caucus.
McNeely says that the Flight Attendants (F/As) once were separated into
six locals, when some F/As formed Flight Attendants for a Democratic Voice
(FDV) and went to TDU for help on local union bylaws reform and legal advice.
FDV campaigned for Ron Carey's nomination as Teamster president, who "overwhelmingly
won in our locals" among flight attendants.
After Carey's election, the flight attendants were permitted to form
their own local union (IBT Local Union 2000), which ensured that their officials
would come from their ranks.
By January 1998, a slate that included TDUers won office, "electing
all seven E-board positions and 14 of 16 base representatives. Over 70 percent
of the F/As voted and our slate, the It's Time Slate, got over 70 percent
of the vote.
"It clearly was a mandate for change. ... The previous old-guard
administration left us with a weak grievance handling system, with no rank-and-file
education programs or involvement. ... By using strategies that were successful
in the 1997 UPS strike, we educated and mobilized thousands of flight attendants
into a powerful voice against the company.
"Through our mobilizing efforts we have handed the union to the
members, who now believe it is their union. Members believe they can make
demands, and that they can take action to change what they don't like. Just
what a real union should be like."
Since Hoffa's election, some of Local 2000's officials have weakened
and, says McNeely, "our negotiating committee has allied itself with
the Hoffa old-guard administration and is proceeding to intimidate our members
on this contract vote."
However, the lopsided rejection of the proposed pact clearly shows that
Hoffa's high-pressure tactics that proved successful against Anheuser-Busch
workers, couldn't make a dent in the solidarity that the F/As have achieved
since 1987.
The F/As resounding rejection of Hoffa,s deal can also be a victory and
a winning model for all Teamsters who are ready to stand up to the union
bureaucrats who run interference for the bosses.
Sharecroppers on wheels
In the middle of July, Teamsters Local 174 led owner-operator container-haulers
off the job, in support of Canadian striking port truckers in Vancouver.
The Canadian truckers, after a month-long struggle, won their beef, even
refusing to go back to work, pending an arbitrated settlement.
The Seattle and Vancouver workers hit the bricks in order to get from
under a fee-for-load pay system. They wanted-and the Canadians won-hourly
wages. Both constituencies said that congestion-related waiting time was
reducing their pay after expenses to $10 a hour. Seattle drivers also want
to vote on Teamster representation, and Local 174 says that about half of
the drivers have signed-up.
After two weeks, the Seattle drivers suspended their walkout, but said
they are ready to walk again after 30 days, if there is no progress, or
if the companies retaliate against the strikers.
"If port haulers [the companies] agree to let the drivers vote on
union representation, and they let the Teamsters in, it will be the first
time owner-operators in this country have been organized for collective
bargaining," according to an industry mouthpiece, Transport Topics
(Aug. 31).
Brewery workers' decertification collapses
Some Budweiser brewery workers circulated decertification petitions at
their Baldwinsville, N.Y., plant, in the wake of the national ratification
of the take-away-ridden master contract covering the company's 12 U.S. plants.
The petitions were passed out by workers who had supported Hoffa in the
1998 election. When the Carey/Leedham supporters refused to sign the petitions,
the decertification effort among the 800 workers failed.
The master contract has not been signed by the IBT, pending outstanding
differences over some local supplements to the national contract. Budweiser
offered to fully implement the contract right away (presumably restoring
the dues check-off), if Hoffa would agree not to allow workers from one
area to picket another plant over the unresolved local issues.
Hoffa squelches raid on HERE
Last December, the Cipriani restaurant family took control of the Rainbow
Room at New York's Rockefeller Center and fired the 250 longtime workers,
members of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 6.
After more than six months of picketing, which Cipriani said "cost
him hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business" (The New York
Times, Aug.12). Louis Smith, president of Teamsters Local 810, signed a
contract with Cipriani covering the Rainbow Room and two other locations.
"At the time he signed a contract with the Teamsters, Mr. Cipriani
said that he thought he had finally 'found a local we could work with.'"
The Times also reported that "the District Attorney's rackets bureau
were already looking into allegations that employers had paid bribes to
officials at Local 810 in return for sweetheart contracts..."
Just hours after the press reported on the new contract, Hoffa reportedly
told Smith and Local 810 to "cease and desist." Smith dropped
his new contracts like a hot potato, telling the New York Daily News, "I
will do whatever Hoffa wants."
Since then, HERE Local 6 negotiated a six-year pact. However, the Cipriani
family is now facing a state suit, accusing it of sexual discrimination
by hiring only men as waiters.
Socialist Action /October 1999 |