Flight Attendants, Pilots, Mechanics, Stagehands and Others Join AFL-CIO Unions

by Mike Hall, Mar 4, 2009

Airline pilots, flight attendants, city employees, mechanics and stagehands are the latest workers to choose a voice at work with AFL-CIO unions.

The independent National Pilots Association (NPA)—made up of the cockpit crews at AirTran Airways—has agreed to merge with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). The executive board of the 1,700-pilot union approved the merger agreement last month, and ALPA endorsed the merger in December. AirTran pilots will vote on the proposal starting this month.

NPA and AirTran have been in contract talks since 2004. NPA President Mike Best says:

Our hope is that the [switch to ALPA] will give us more resources to get a better contract sooner.

Elsewhere in the aviation world, flight attendants at Ryan International Airlines voted to join the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) by an overwhelming 74 percent margin. The 150 flight attendants staff the airline’s scheduled and charter services.

Also choosing AFA-CWA were flight attendants at Lynx Aviation, who voted by a better than 2-to-1 margin to join the union. The 87 workers turned back an anti-union campaign that the union says included hiring a union-busting law firm and an attempt to fire the lead organizer. Says AFA-CWA President Patricia Friend:

Lynx flight attendants stood together and made their voices heard despite outdated National Mediation Board (NMB) rules…and management’s anti-union tactics.

While airline and rail workers are covered by a different labor law than most other workers—the Railway Labor Act (RLA) rather than the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—they face the same anti-union tactics, harassment and intimidation as do far too many workers trying to exercise their freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

In fact, a report released today reveals that in more than a quarter of organizing efforts, pro-union workers are fired. It offers even more evidence of the need to enact the Employee Free Choice Act and restore the freedom of workers covered by the NLRA to form unions.

AFA-CWA and aviation and rail workers long have criticized the RLA rules—developed and administered by the NMB—under which they are forced to organize. In September, Friend told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee:

For years, the NMB has established a series of onerous rules that have made it difficult for workers to organize in the aviation industry.

In other worker victories, 150 employees at BAE Systems in Honolulu voted  to join Machinists (IAM) Local 1998. The workers are mechanics, locksmiths, electronic technicians and maintenance workers at the U.S. Army’s Schofield Barracks.

In Milwaukee, 43 soil scientists, engineers, foresters, hydrologists and fire management officials voted to join the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM) Local 2165.

City workers in Mitchell, S.D., voted to join AFSCME. The 87 workers include parks and recreation, public works, finance and other city departments. Paul Aylward, executive director of AFSCME Council 59, told the Mitchell Daily Republic:

We believe that the people need to have a say in the workplace, and that this is how they will get their say—by forming their union and having a voice.

The Theatrical Stage Employees union (IATSE) reports that 300 workers at Nasco Staffing Solutions, the largest on-demand event staffing company in Canada, voted to join IATSE Local 891.

The 300 workers at the company’s Vancouver, B.C., operations do production setup work at concerts, stage shows and other live events. Local 891 is the largest I.A.T.S.E. local in Canada representing technical, artistic, and allied crafts in British Columbia and the Yukon.

IATSE President Matthew D. Loeb says:

This is an important step in organizing nonunion labor contractors in Canada and the United States who work in our industries.

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