Julie Tsamoutales, Secretary; Russ McGarry, Director; and Jim Price, Collective Bargaining Coordinator.

Collective Bargaining

“Collective Bargaining!” The simple nature and definition of those words defines this Department. Our job is to bargain in a collective manner to secure the very best in wages and benefits for our members. We rely on each member, each Local Lodge, each District, and each Territory to assist us in accomplishing our goals. The task is to develop and articulate a strategy to renew the growth in the labor movement as we travel through the 21st century and that represents an enormous challenge for our union and our membership. The theory that practices proven successful in the past will prove to be successful in the future may or may not be logical in today’s environment.

We must use every resource available in order to combat the political, social and economic policies of globalization. Whether we accept the notion of globalization or not, we can no longer afford to look at corporations as single entities. We are stronger than each of us alone may think. Collectively we can bargain to face the increasing crisis of domination by corporate special interests that work against and at the expense of working families and, most importantly, our members.

This challenge of corporate and global interests flexing their coordinated muscle to force a decline in our standard of living and our union’s strength must be met head on. Using all the collective resources of the IAM in total is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity.

A Strategic Approach

We must better understand how corporate, legislative, social and economic policies work in today’s environment in order to ensure collective bargaining works for our members. We must take a strategic approach using different methods and utilizing our own Strategic Resources Department to achieve our goals in order to simultaneously bargain more effectively and grow our union at the same time. The following five areas are key.