Machinists Union Requires Voter ID During Boeing Election. Hypocritical, No?

Recently, Unionized Boeing Machinists voted overwhelmingly to approve a four-year contract extension in a deal that grants the company a long stretch of elusive labor peace and  ends the NLRB federal complaint that had become a hot topic.   What you might not have known is that the IAM required photo ID for all voters.  So it suits unions to require voter ID when they want to ratify a new contract and ensure fair play?  Were they concerned that a non dues paying, illegal constituent could potentially offset the vote of a dues paying, legal member in good standing’s vote?  Will the AFL-CIO cease and desist in chanting “racist” when voter ID becomes  a requirement for voting in government elections?  I doubt it.

 

 

The Actual Boeing “Project Gemini” Documents Released By The IAM Union.

My new Boeing shirt.

The IAM, International Association of Machinists released documents that they allege prove that Boeing “was moving work to Charleston to punish workers for exercising their union rights.”   They further claim that:

Project Gemini

The documents disclosed Friday were first presented to Boeing’s board of directors in April, August and October 2009. They show that:

• Boeing Commercial Airplanes executives from Puget Sound considered Project Gemini to be the highest-risk option they studied, with the highest likelihood of failure and the most-serious consequences should failure occur.

• Even if successful, the cost of Project Gemini would have a long-term “negative impact to 787 program profitability,” the executives warned. The new buildings would cost between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, they said — “significantly greater” than the cost of keeping the line in Everett.

• The new Charleston workers would not be as productive as those in Everett, increasing the likelihood of missed deliveries, they warned. That would mean payments of more late fees to angry customers that have already demanded billions of dollars in compensation after three years of delays.

• Finally, Puget Sound executives feared that having separate 787 lines 3,000 miles apart would delay introduction of the 787-9, a new larger Dreamliner. They warned of “skill dilution” with managers and assembly workers spread between two sites, as well as the risk of “management distraction.”

What the documents actually reveal is that Boeing created two teams, one red, and one blue.  The red team was responsible for arguing the case that some of the 787 work go to South Carolina while the blue team was responsible for making the case that the work remain in Washington.  Seems reasonable that a company would identify the pros and cons of each.  The union fails to represent any of the perceived, and based on recent history, negative impacts that they contribute to by remaining in Washington.

If I were the king of Boeing, I would have chartered a third team that studied the option of manufacturing abroad.  Not that I would want the work to go overseas, but it would have provided a reality check to all concerned.

Lastly the fact remains that the IAM would not have initiated any of the original charges had the employees in South Carolina rejected representation of them by the IAM…twice.  It is not Boeing that is rejecting the union, but the employees in South Carolina, and for the NLRB, the IAM, and the media for that matter to be continuing this charade is  a waste of energy, and money.

Machinists Leaders Meet With Pope?

In a bid to reinvigorate the long-standing ties between labor and the faith community, a delegation of IAM leaders from the United States and Canada met recently with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in Rome.

In addition to the audience granted to the IAM delegation, the Pope met privately with IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger, who shared a concern of many that Catholic Bishops are not as supportive of the labor movement as they once were.

The Catholic Church has a long history of inspiring and supporting labor, civil and human rights campaigns, from the pro-labor encyclical “Rerum Novarum” issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, to the activities of Dorothy Day, John Cort, George G. Higgins and hundreds of priests and bishops who marched with U.S. civil rights activists.  Read the full iMail IAM article here.