Q & A
Questions and Answers 39 - 40
Question 39: Over 5,300 Delta flight attendants voted in their representation election. Though they weren’t able to secure AFA-CWA representation this time around, of those votes, how many voted for AFA-CWA and how many voted against?
Answer: More than 99% of the 5,306 who cast ballots voted to join AFA-CWA.
The National Mediation Board (NMB) has constructed its balloting process to assume that everyone is voting “no” unless affirmatively casting a vote in favor of the union. Simply not voting is counted the same as a “no” vote. This is why Delta’s anti-union task force of managers and public relations contractors developed the “Give A Rip” campaign—by convincing individuals to forfeit their own, democratic right to be counted, each of those flight attendants would be, in essence, casting a “no” vote. Nobody actually voted against AFA-CWA because the NMB voting process does not allow for a “no” vote to be cast.
The NMB is doing the bidding of the current anti-worker administration, making it harder and harder for workers to exercise their constitutional right to organize by creating hurdles like this one in every representation election: the list of “eligible” employees at Delta included those on extended leave, still on furlough despite Delta’s recent hiring spree, even those in early-out programs. By artificially inflating the list, Delta and the NMB dramatically increased the number of ballots that had to be cast to earn union representation. Unlike true democratic elections, in which not voting does not actually reward one side or the other, these elections favor anti-union management by permitting a voter’s apathy to count as a “no” vote!
The Delta representation election has been a good, early lesson for Northwest flight attendants. When the NMB eventually calls another representation election for the combined Delta/Northwest workgroup (if a merger is approved by the Department of Justice), we have already seen firsthand that not voting works against our best interests. Not voting has the same effect as casting a vote against collective bargaining rights, against a legally binding contract, and against union representation. We cannot afford to let voter apathy determine our future in a merger. Each of us must cast a vote to maintain our seat at the table in consolidation.
Question 40: If this merger is approved by the DOJ, just when can we expect another union representation election? Will it be in three months, six months, a year?
Answer: When the two carriers operate as a “single transportation system” as defined under NMB rules, a vote will be triggered. The single transportation sytem designation initiates a union representation election if 35% of the combined workforce has either signed a valid authorization card seeking union representation—like those cards collected from Delta flight attendants—or is currently represented by a union. We will get “credit” for 100% of our Northwest flight attendant system seniority list toward this 35%, plus all valid cards at Delta. We will have enough to trigger a new election.
The NMB’s representation manual online lists several indicia of this single transportation system classification, not all of which must be met at once. With the pressure Northwest and Delta are putting on Congress and the Department of Justice to ram this merger through before the current administration leaves the White House, we could find ourselves voting later this year. We have to be ready and willing to cast a ballot to protect our rights in this merger.
If a majority of the combined group of approximately 22,000 does not vote for a union in that election, our contract and all provisions in it will be rendered null and void immediately. We will lose our union representation. We will lose our scope, furlough and transfer protections. If we lose our union, we lose the chance to negotiate an improved contract.
It’s not hard to imagine what management will do on the day we lose our seat at the bargaining table. Whatever executive management team is left standing will have eliminated the needle in its corporate moral compass. After the champagne fountain runs dry at the victory party, there will be nothing to stop executives from lowering the bar for all flight attendants in the industry by cutting jobs, benefits and pay, all while reaping the rewards of consolidation in their own negotiated compensation packages. Issues on which we have fought for years to hold the line—like outsourcing of our international flying—would suddenly be open to management’s whim.
It is our responsibility to each other and to our profession to prevent this scenario from happening and to further raise standards in commercial aviation by exercising our individual voting power in the next NMB election.
Posted by Communications on 06/04 at 04:10 PM