AFMA's Altered Reality
By Mark Gabriel, UAL Mechanic, San Francisco
As aircraft mechanics troubleshooting a problem, we carefully investigate the symptoms of the malfunction and find all the documentation available before reaching a decision on how to proceed. In a similar fashion, to make a clear-headed and rational choice of choosing
a Collective Bargaining Agent requires documented facts from as many reliable sources as possible. One of these sources should be
the official record of AMFA National’s communications available on the National’s website. Through the course of my research, I made
an extremely disturbing discovery that calls into question the validity of this informational source and the safeguards in place to
protect it and the ethics of those responsible for maintaining these documents.
Perhaps what is one of the most important documents
from the archived Northwest mechanics’ record has been removed and replaced by a crude cut-and-paste forgery. This is the NWA Negotiating
Committee Update #27, dated 8-20-05, which announced the strike against Northwest Airlines. It has been replaced by a relabeled and
edited version of the NWA Negotiating Committee’s Update #28, dated 9-01-05. When I noticed the change, I was able to download and
save a copy of the original document from the NWA Local 33’s website and have confirmed that the same information is still available
on the Local 33 website. This original document, the forged document put in its place on the National’s website and the forgery’s
source document are available on the teamstersatual.com website should the National attempt to remove the evidence from their website.
(See web links below)
The NWA negotiation update #27 is a one-page cover letter with an attached chart comparing the last best
NWA offer of 8-18-05 vs. the current 2005- 2009 UAL-AMFA agreement. Some of the obvious inaccuracies in the listing of the UAL-AMFA
agreement’s terms such as amendable date of 01-01-11, or failing to mention that the Computer Techs’ work would be outsourced can
by excused by the lack of familiarity by the AMFA negotiators at NWA. However, what is immediately apparent is that the terms NWA
offered were no better than what UAL mechanics currently work under after two rounds of bankruptcy concessions. AMFA’s deteriorating
bargaining position due to a drastically reduced workforce, unchallenged company training of mechanic replacements, failure to rally
support amongst the other NWA employees and the inability to seriously disrupt NWA’s operations by withholding the mechanics’ work
had given management the upper hand. In fact, the communiqué acknowledges that NWA’s last offer was worse than what had been on the
table five months earlier. The AMFA negotiators were willing to go so far as to allow NWA to eliminate about 1/3 of the remaining
AMFA represented jobs (about 1500) along with several other concessions in an attempt to come to an agreement and avoid the strike.
When the company rejected that concessionary offer, the committee was NOT willing to bring the company’s final offer back to
the membership. Even NWA would have allowed a one-week time extension of their imposed contract for that vote to occur. Not withstanding
the opinion of O. V. Delle-Femine, Steve MacFarlane and the AMFA negotiators who said that they had “no choice but to enact our self-help”,
their act of not allowing the AMFA members to vote on the company’s offer was contrary to the democratic principles AMFA claims to
represent. Perhaps the 2750 mechanics that NWA was willing to give job protection to would have had a different opinion. At the very
least, it would have been their choice. In the end, this ill-conceived decision by the negotiators fatally weakened the solidarity
of the striking mechanics and resulted in no AMFA-represented jobs being protected in the end.
Why would anyone wish to hide
the missing update from the surviving AMFA membership? Not knowing who at the National was responsible makes it impossible to know
their motives completely, but one can clearly see where the AMFA leadership would find this information very embarrassing. By their
efforts to save face and politic fallout, we are all being denied the facts and the NWA mechanics’ sacrifices are being (at the very
least) disrespected.
Through this article, I am calling for an investigation by the AMFA National Executive Council to find
the person or persons responsible for the tampering of the official AMFA records. The results of this investigation must be made public
to the entire membership. More oversight of the record keeping must be instituted immediately to prevent further incidents. Appropriate
disciplinary action must be taken to prevent people of such low integrity from being in positions of authority or having access to
information being disseminated to the members of this association.