Rich Petrovsky

  AMFA’s Dismal Grievance Record

 by Rich Petrovsky, 37-year UAL mechanic and Chair of the Committee for Change

 Over the past four years, AMFA has had little to no success in winning grievances. In fact, at the August Local 9 meeting in San Francisco (SFO), their report stated that they had 405 grievances waiting to be heard (And they said the IAM was bad!)

This clearly illustrates just how little the company actually takes AMFA as a serious threat. Unfortunately, because of this stigma between United and the AMFA, there are almost as many injured parties as there are grievances on file!

Let’s take another look at this problem. Every day AMFA refuses to push for a grievance to be heard is another day where a little more of our contract is being whittled away! If they won’t fight it, the company wins and it can become lost contract language.

By now, all of you know of the system visits we have made. I can personally tell you that at every station I visited, at least one individual came up to me during the open house and said, “Our AMFA reps won’t even accept our grievances!” Under the National Mediation Board (NMB) rules, this constitutes a failure of duty to represent.

Sadly, even the major grievances that the AMFA has taken to the system board have been lost to the company because of AMFA’s failure to prepare or by arguing the wrong contract language.

United Airlines looks upon our current representation as a joke. But we are the ones suffering for it.

Conversely, the Teamsters at Continental Airlines put each and every grievance to rest in an expeditious manner. In the words of one Teamster representative from Houston, “The supervisors know when I come through that door, there’s a freight train (of support) coming in behind me! They really don’t want that!”

There is no such thing as too small a grievance with these representatives. If it’s a contract violation, it gets taken care of right away. The carriers (where the Teamsters represent members) know this and understand they have to “play by the book!” or that freight train will haul them all the way to arbitration.