Airline unions call for fair election rules

While the union leaders were speaking in St. Paul, the National Mediation Board was taking public testimony in Washington, D.C., on a proposal to change the decades-old rules for conducting union elections in the airline and rail industries.

Flight Attendants and Machinists listened as union leaders spoke at a news conference in St. Paul.

Under the current system, unions must win the support of the majority of workers eligible to vote – not just the majority of those who actually vote in a union representation election. If a worker does not vote, he or she is counted as voting no.

The proposed rule change would allow voters who actually cast a ballot to determine the outcome of the election, as is done in every other union representation and public election in the United States.

“The current voting rule is unfair,” said Rene Foss, communications chair for the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, at Northwest Airlines.

“All of us encourage the National Mediation Board to make this rule change,” said Ken Hooker, president of Machinists Local 1833, representing more than 4,000 airline workers in Minnesota and other Midwestern states.

Unique history
The unusual voting system for airline and rail workers can be traced to the Railway Labor Act, enacted in the 1920s. The National Mediation Board, acting in the interests of interstate commerce, structured an election system that makes it more difficult for workers to win union representation.

The current voting process is not required by law and the board has the ability to change it, advocates said.

Foss and Hooker said a new process would have positive implications for airline workers. With the merger of the mostly union Northwest Airlines with the mostly non-union Delta Airlines, both the Flight Attendants and Machinists are engaged in organizing drives.

Rene Foss	Ken Hooker

Earlier this year, the AFA would have won a union election among the non-union flight attendants – except that people who did not vote were counted as voting against the union.

“The AFA lost the election, even though 98 percent of those who voted, voted for the AFA,” Foss said. Airline management interfered in the election and even sent DVDs to workers’ homes to encourage them to tear up their ballot, she said.

“There can be any number of reasons why an individual could not vote and it should not be assumed they are against the union,” Foss said. If the National Mediation Board rules were in effect in public elections, “thousands of elected officials at the local, state and federal level would never take office,” she said.

Squaring off in Washington
At the public hearing in Washington, D.C., union leaders and labor law experts squared off against executives of the airline and rail industries and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"The new rule will not suddenly give unions an edge in elections, as some claim," said Robert Roach, Jr., general vice president of the Machinists. "It will only take the advantage away from the carriers who are opposed to air and rail voters\’ rights for the same reason people were opposed to guaranteeing voting rights for women and African Americans – they are afraid to upset the status quo and lose the advantages they enjoy at the expense of others."

Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, said, “The NMB’s election procedures are also an anomaly in the realm of American labor-management relations. Workers in all other areas of the economy, including those in both the private and public sectors, are afforded the right to definitively affirm or reject representation by a majority vote of those who participate.”

Management representatives argued the board is rushing through the rule change.

In St. Paul, several members of Congress and the state Legislature added their voices in support of a change.

“I am pleased to share with you that I am leading the congressional effort to urge the National Mediation Board to adopt a new standard for union elections,” Congressman Jim Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the U.S. House Transportation Committee, said in a statement read by a staff member.

More than 160 members of Congress have signed a statement supporting new rules, Oberstar said.

Congressman Keith Ellison thanked the airline workers for maintaining a safe and professional air transportation system.

“You ought to have a right to a union and you shouldn’t have some phony election rules to deprive you of it,” Ellison said. “A well-represented workforce is key an American middle class. We’ve got to fight for it. We can’t back off of it.”

The National Mediation Board is accepting comments on its proposal until Jan. 4, 2010. Comments may be e-mailed to legal@nmb.gov

The Machinists union also has set up a form on its website for submitting comments.

Video from the St. Paul news conference
Courtesy of Michael Moore, St. Paul Union Advocate

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Viewpoint: Revised election rule would restore democracy for air, rail workers