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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 17, 2014)
Boeing controversy fuels challenge to top Machinist posts The recent contract concessions at lenging incumbent international presi- Boeing Co. have motivated a Portland- dent R. Thomas Buffenbarger in the re- area Machinists Union member to run run election. Maloney, the Gresham Boeing plant worker, joined for office in upcoming inter- Cronk’s slate Jan. 12. national union elections. Pat Maloney has been a union Maloney — a 15-year em- activist since 1995, when he ployee at Boeing’s Gresham supported a union campaign aircraft parts plant — is seek- at Precision Castparts. The ing nominations for general company fired him in 1997 on vice president of the Interna- trumped-up accusations, and tional Association of Ma- later paid $100,000 to settle chinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), and is part Pat Maloney of his National Labor Relations of a slate that’s challenging IAM Lodge 63 is Board case. Maloney went to the incumbent national lead- running for gen- work at Boeing in 1998 as a eral VP. flight control component ership. tester, became active in the IAM held elections in January 2013 for its top officers. But af- Machinists union, and has served a ter complaints about election practices, number of offices in Local Lodge 63. Cronk’s slate includes another mem- the union is re-doing the election this year under the supervision of the U.S. ber from Boeing — Jason Redrup, a Department of Labor (DOL). A DOL union business representative in Puget investigation found that the election Sound’s District 751. Cronk and his slate outline their rules outlined in the IAM constitution violate a federal law governing union campaign platform at iamreform.org. The campaign platform doesn’t elections. Specifically, the DOL found that IAM didn’t notify members about specifically mention the Boeing con- nominations, and members didn’t have tract, but Cronk says it was “very badly a reasonable opportunity to nominate mishandled.” “They got themselves involved ab- candidates because some were working sent any input from the local leader- during nomination meetings. The elections complaint was filed by ship, and made commitments to Boe- one of the 2013 candidates for general ing they couldn’t deliver,” Cronk said. vice president, longtime United Air- “I wouldn’t have brought that offer to lines worker Karen Asuncion. In the members.” In November, members voted by a do-over election, Asuncion is running as part of a slate headed by one time 2-to-1 margin to reject a Boeing pro- railroad worker and longtime IAM posal for an eight-year extension of staffer Jay Cronk. Cronk worked for the their current contract, which expires international as coordinator of IAM’s 2016. But Buffenbarger insisted, over Transportation Division. He is chal- local union objections, that a slightly JANUARY 17, 2014 improved Boeing offer get a vote. The revised deal was approved Jan. 3 by 51 percent of Boeing workers, voting at the end of a holiday break. Under its terms, Boeing commits to build a next- generation aircraft in the Puget Sound in return for workers accepting raises of just 1 percent every other year, in- creased out-of-pocket medical costs, and an end to their pension in 2016, to be replaced with a 401(k) retirement savings account that would receive much less generous funding. The con- tract runs through 2024. Maloney said he was already con- cerned about leadership decisions, but the Boeing contract in particular made him decide to run. “Commercial air manufacturing and use is in a boom time right now,” Mal- oney said. “We should never accept concessionary agreements when the economy is good.” Maloney said the new Boeing con- tract “radically severs the whole soli- darity process,” and destroys trust be- tween members and the leadership. H OW THE V OTE W ILL T AKE P LACE Even under DOL supervision, IAM’s system for electing international officers is quite complex. It starts Sat- urday, Jan. 25, when each “local lodge” will hold special meetings for members to nominate candidates for endorse- ment by that local lodge. Meetings will be at 6-8 a.m. and 6-8 p.m. so members working every shift can attend. Nomi- nations will be taken for all of the top international offices: international pres- ident, general secretary-treasurer and the eight U.S. general vice presidents. [IAM’s Canadian members elect their own general vice president, and eight U.S. general vice presidents are elected at large — and then are assigned to ter- ritories or divisions by the international president. In cases where offices re- ceive the same number of nominations as seats available, those nominees are considered to be endorsed by the local lodge. But where more candidates are nominated than positions available, the local lodge then holds “runoff” election meetings Feb. 8 to determine which nominees get the endorsement. All can- didates for international office who re- ceive the endorsement of more than 25 local lodges then qualify for the na- tional ballot. The final vote will take places at the first regularly scheduled meeting of each local lodge in April. IAM has over 800 local lodges. At larger lodges, DOL agents will be pres- ent to observe the process. ...Machinists narrowly ratify Boeing pact (From Page 1) “... the membership deserves the final say ... I have requested the voting process be conducted in a manner that enables the fullest participation of the membership.” Buffenbarger didn’t take a position one way or the other on how to vote, though his letter emphasized that sev- eral states had tendered “serious offers and incentive packages to the com- pany” and “the timeline for the Puget Sound area is expiring.” Wroblewski and the Lodge 751 staff NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS unanimously recommended that mem- bers reject Boeing’s offer. Many union members and local union leaders questioned the timing of the second vote. “Our international president forced this vote under the guise of he wanted the members to have the final say on it,” Kelliher told Workers Independnet News. “Well, if you want the members to have the final say, don’t pick a day where you know 25 to 30 percent of them are not available.” Kelliher said since Jan. 3 “there’s been a huge outcry” from members calling for a third vote so that a true ma- jority of Machinists members have a chance to cast ballots. She said several members have filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and petitions calling for a re- vote have been circulated to collect sig- natures to send to the international union. Rank-and-file workers held a “Re-Vote Rally” Jan. 9 at the Everett Union Hall. “We’re in unchartered ground,” Kel- liher said. The vote to surrender a defined pen- sion plan also spurred some media pun- dits to predict the end-times for all of organized labor. Kelliher disagreed, telling Bloom- burg News that workers felt powerless because they were in the middle of a contract and, therefore, didn’t have their biggest weapon — the threat of a strike — to slow Boeing from its de- mands for concessions. [Boeing Machinists are working un- der the terms of a contract that expires in September 2016. That contact was “extended” mid-term in 2011, also un- der threat of relocating jobs to another state if it wasn’t ratified. The last true collective bargaining took place in 2008. If allowed to stand, the newly ex- tended contract won’t expire until 2024.] Just days before the Jan. 3 contract vote Boeing unleashed a full-scale me- dia campaign to support the deal. Press conferences by politicians pushed Ma- chinists to accept the deal or else bring financial ruin to Puget Sound. “We faced tremendous pressure from every source imaginable in decid- ing how to vote,” Wroblewski wrote to members in a post-election letter. “Politicians, the media and others who had no right to get into our business, were aligned against us and did their best to influence your vote.” Kelliher called Boeing’s actions “corporate extortion that squeezed both the workers and $8.7 billion in tax con- cessions from Washington state.” In a three-day special session in No- vember, Washington lawmakers granted Boeing the largest private corporation tax subsidy in the history of the United States. And despite the portayal of workers giving up their pensions in return for guaranteed jobs, Kelliher said there is no real iron-clad jobs guarantee in the contract. “For a two-paragraph language giv- ing us the airplane, the first sentence says we get the work and the next two paragraphs give them loopholes to move it,” she told Workers Independent News. Wroblewski said the union’s goal in coming years will be to fight to ensure Boeing lives up to its commitment to its workforce and keeps jobs in Wash- ington state. “Our members have spoken and this is the course we’ll take,” he said. (Editor’s Note: Boeing employs about 82,000 workers in Washington. Last spring its engineers and technical employees — represented by the Soci- ety of Professional Engineering Em- ployees in Aerospace (SPEEA) — rati- fied contracts that ended defined benefit pension plans for new hires. In ex- change they will have 401(k) style sav- ings plans. Bargaining of those con- tracts was contentious, with proposals rejected, threats of a strike, and nearly a dozen unfair labor practice com- plaints filed by the union.) PAGE 7
