The IAM Legal Department, from right: General Counsel Allison Beck and Associate General Counsels Mary McHugh, Christopher Corson, David Neigus and Carla Siegel.

Legal — 2

We are able to report a number of accomplishments since the last Grand Lodge Convention despite the relentlessly difficult political and economic times we have been experiencing since the end of 2000, when the United States Supreme Court awarded the Presidency to George Bush. Less than a year later, the September 11th terrorist attacks shocked our sense of security and destroyed the livelihoods of tens of thousands of IAM air transportation workers. And, instead of providing any real assistance or protection to suffering working families, the Bush Administration began systematically dismantling the civil liberties upon which our country was built.

The Republican takeover of the Congress in November, 2002 added further insult to injury. Our friends in Congress were now powerless to prevent our foes from staffing important government agencies with antiworker officials and stripping away most of the worker protections we had achieved during the Clinton-Gore Administration. And, throughout this period, a failing economy, a continued blind devotion to so-called free trade, and the consequent hemorrhaging of good paying manufacturing jobs has left us fighting for our survival.

As a result, many of our victories have involved holding the defensive line.We have become deeply involved in many bankruptcies and restructurings (Consolidated Freightways, Baltimore Marine Industries, Shepard Niles, Special Metals, Fulton Bellows, Goss Graphic, and Durango Steel, to name just a few) in order to protect our members.We have gone to court to stop subcontracting and outsourcing at Pratt and Whitney and Hamilton Sundstrand, and we have had our successes despite the general hostility of the federal courts to worker rights.We have joined with other unions to battle a vengeful and antiworker Department of Labor and new efforts to pack the federal courts with ultra-conservative, anti-worker ideologues. The NLRB is again in danger of losing sight of its mission, letting countless representation cases languish for years pending “review.”

In the end, we must repeat what we have said previously—our laws are only as good as the courts and administrative agencies that enforce them, and those courts and administrative agencies, in turn, are only as good as the people who are appointed to serve on them. Without political leaders who understand that workplace rights and union rights are essential to justice and prosperity for all workers, and who make appointments based on this principle, we will not be able to improve the lives of those we serve.

In the following report, we describe some of the key developments over the last four years in the laws we deal with most frequently— the National Labor Relations Act, the Railway Labor Act, and the anti-discrimination laws.We also will review important legal developments affecting our Federal sector and Canadian membership.We would be remiss in this report, however, if we did not begin by highlighting the grossly intrusive and anti-American laws that were passed after September 11th in the name of “national security.”