The contract included introduction of part-time utility (cleaners) for the first time, a pay parity scheme tied to wages and work rules at the company's main competitors, and mandatory overtime for deicing. An increase in the onetime pay raise from 3.5 percent to 6 percent for the five-year contract was heralded by union officials as a major accomplishment. The signing bonus was also upped to 5 percent of last year's wages, and a fourth year bonus added.

Given the track record for airline contract negotiations — the last US Airways contract expired in 1995 — and the length of this agreement, the 6 percent pay raise could likely be spread over 12 years or more. Few workers believe the pay parity formula is designed to do anything but freeze our wages, and the contract actually mandates the company and union to come up with further concessions if our pay is above the rate they determine to be pay parity.

This leaves the next contract confrontation at the company to the 9,000 flight attendants organized by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA). The AFA's October 19 hotline reported, "Company executives are telling flight attendants that all the other work groups have agreed to the company's 'parity' concept and that it's time for the flight attendants to get on the 'band wagon.'" This could mean "drastic cuts in scheduling, work rules and benefits. It would also mean an insufficient pay raise."

Flight attendants marked 1,000 days without a contract in late September with informational picket lines. If a tentative agreement is not reached by November 19, the union says it will ask the National Mediation Board to declare an impasse and begin the 30-day cooling off period, which could be followed by strike actions

"Flight attendants were disappointed that we agreed to this contract," says Philadelphia cleaner Chuck Byrd. "It's all up to them now to take on the parity issue."

Philadelphia was the only sizable station to vote down the maintenance agreement. The day after the IAM voted on our contract, packets began arriving in the mail laying out options for next year's health insurance. Since it was never an issue presented to us during contract discussions, it came as quite a shock to discover that here in Philadelphia the premiums that employees pay for Aetna U.S. Healthcare had jumped 2.6 times for the family plan to $110 per month. This means that under the new wage rates, for example, a cleaner into their third year of employment who opts for the family insurance plan will see their paycheck actually decrease under the new contract.

Mechanics and cleaners were in a position to fight these concessions. Fleet service workers, who had finally approved a contract last spring five years after voting in the IAM, were set to back any action by the maintenance workers. Flight attendants were supportive, and AFA officials had reported to members that an arbitration decision after the 1992 maintenance strike now gave them the go-ahead to honor IAM picket lines. The customer service workers beat back several challenges by the company to their votes to join the Communication Workers of America and are in the midst of contract negotiations as well. Said one mechanic, "We knew we were in a good position, the company knew it, but people just didn't have the confidence that our officials could pull off a strike successfully."

Philadelphia mechanic Fred Wright commented that the negotiating committee "should have started with all the previous givebacks — health insurance copayments being the biggest one — and they should have demanded they all be wiped away, and then started negotiating a new contract."

Instead, the union tops engaged in years of secret negotiations when only the company and union officials knew what was happening. During this time there were no mobilizations of the ranks to show the company that workers were ready to fight for a decent contract.

Company attempts to divide the membership during this period was exacerbated by the union decision to divide mechanics and related workers (that is cleaners) off from other airline workers in IAM District 141. This was the IAM's misdirected response to the drive by the Airline Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) to break mechanics away from the IAM to form a craft bargaining group —instead of taking AMFA head on by explaining how we're all stronger when we're united in an industrial union.

The company's demand for part-time cleaners, which was not addressed by union officials, added to this division. "Part-time is a done deal because it's everywhere in the industry" was a common refrain from those not willing to fight the concessionary agreement. The fact was that they hadn't done it yet at US Airways. Now we'll work alongside each other with three classes of cleaners: those at the top of the pay scale, those on the B scale, and those on the B scale who are part-time with part-time benefits.

There is a lot of anger and discontent with the union officialdom, which unanimously recommended a yes vote on such a proposal. During contract discussions, officials expressed more concern with US Airways' falling stock prices than with how we could organize to protect our rights and get a decent contract. But union bureaucrats who look to a cooperative relationship with the company as an alternative to involving their members in a fight is nothing new to the labor movement.

Capitalism's World Disorder: Working-Class Politics at the Millennium is a book that can help airline workers figure out how to take on these challenges. In it Jack Barnes writes, "The bureaucrats are complicit with the bosses in encouraging the divisions among workers that breed atomization and demoralization. They have no intention of leading the kind of fight necessary to improve working conditions, shorten hours of work, and increase wages. They cannot imagine a union that puts itself in the front ranks of a fighting movement for universal social security protection, real health and safety enforcement, and effective protection of the environment, regardless of the consequences for any boss or any bourgeois party or politician."

But that is the kind of labor movement we need as we enter the next millennium. True leaders don't address the bosses "to complain about what they are doing to us," Barnes contends. "Leaders talk to fellow workers, fellow fighters about where we are messing up; what we have to do; what we have to prepare for. Leaders explain how we have to increase our discipline, change our view of ourselves, and much more in order to accomplish our ends."

Rebecca Arenson and Nancy Cole are members of IAM Local 1776 at US Airways in Philadelphia.  
 
 
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