Tuesday, July 9, 2002


Stock Scandals Stalk White House
The spreading scandals engulfing corporate icons up and down Wall Street sent White House PR shops into crisis mode and forced President George Bush to slide away from his long-time corporate backers.

The collapse of WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and a growing number of once-highly touted firms brought the corporate sector under the glare of the media spotlight and sent a lengthy list of subpoenaed CEOs, financial officers and accountants parading before increasingly skeptical congressional investigative committees.

Both President Bush and VP Dick Cheney have been splattered by the scandals. Bush unloaded more than $800,000 worth of stock in Harken Energy Corp., a Texas-based firm where he was a director, shortly before the company came under fire from the Securities Exchange Commission for its shady accounting procedures. “Sometimes things aren’t exactly black and white,” he said dismissively as reporters quizzed him at a White House press conference.

VP Cheney headed Halliburton Corp., which has also come under fire for questionable accounting practices and creative financial disclosures during the time he served as president.

IAM Challenges UAL Recovery Plan
IAM District 141 and 141-M responded to United Airlines’ recovery proposals last week, including the carrier’s call for a 10 percent wage reduction and a 12-month extension of the contract’s amendable date(s).

The IAM rejected the company’s proposed pay concessions and challenged the notion that the plan represents equitable participation by all employee groups at United. “IAM members at United recently agreed to defer $498 million in retroactive pay to assist the carrier rebuild its cash position,” said Randy Canale, District 141 president and general chairman. “The deferral represents a loan of nearly a half billion dollars by IAM-represented employees at United, many who had not received a pay raise since 1994.”

Canale signaled a willingness to join CEO Jack Creighton in his search for $1 billion in savings. “The members of this union are uniquely situated, from the board room to the flight line, to identify costly mismanagement and implement operational changes to improve passenger, aircraft and cargo handling.

“Short term, quick fix schemes that do little more than revisit the company’s negotiations agenda are certain to be rejected as inadequate by United’s employees, passengers and investors,” said Canale.

Boeing Strike Sanction Vote Underway
A vote by the membership at Boeing is taking place today in Seattle, Wichita and Portland to authorize the IAM Negotiating Committee to call for a strike at the conclusion of bargaining next month.

Negotiations began June 25 in Wichita to replace the three-year Master Agreement between the IAM and Boeing. The contract, covering more than 26,000 aerospace workers, expires September 2, 2002, at 12:01 AM.

Strike authorization provides significant leverage to the negotiating committee at the bargaining table, but does not mean a strike is imminent. IAM members will vote August 29 on the company’s ‘last, best and final’ offer. If the offer is rejected, a formal strike vote will take place, requiring a two-thirds majority of the voting membership.

Results of the strike authorization vote will be posted by July 10 at www.goiam.org.

Steel Firm Steals IAM Jobs
Some 200 laid-off workers, most of them IAM members, won’t regain their jobs when a recently sold steel plant re-opens in Richmond, CA. The workers lost their jobs just one day before the owners sold the facility to Steelscape, which is owned by a Mexican company. The new owners plan to re-open with only 80 workers. The laid-off workers will not be given priority, Steelscape officials say.

Most of the workers are represented by IAM Local 1584, Oakland, CA.

County and city officials expressed shock when they learned Steelscape was using their employment centers to fill the vacancies. Officials ordered the centers to stop finding workers for the firm. A board headed by Tom Kilpatrick oversees the county’s employment centers. In his day job, Kilpatrick serves as human resources manager for USS-POSCO, a Pittsburgh-based steel company.” We need to provide services for all people,” he said, “not just displaced workers.”

Kilpatrick denied that his connection to steel industry management in any way colored his opinions.

Air Force Base Flies IAM
A committed organizing team armed with a message of solidarity and unity flew to victory at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. Some 200 new IAM members will take their place in the union’s ranks after voting for IAM representation last week.

The new members comprise Raytheon’s maintenance team which keeps the USAF T-38 Talons, T-6 Texans and the Joint Trainer (JPATS) in flying trim, reports Ray Moffatt, the District 75 organizer who headed the winning campaign. He credited team members John Boyd, Rick Artus, Dave Craft and Sue Smith with key roles in the victory.

“They did an outstanding job,” Moffatt said. “This unit will be a great asset to the IAM.”

‘Corporate Terrorism’ Roils Election Strategies
Democratic campaign strategists see corporate scandals such as Enron and WorldCom as a potent issue in competitive House races across the country. Add that to a growing public distrust of drug companies and their soaring prices, add a dash of corporate tax dodges such as relocating to offshore havens and the outlines of the campaign begin to take shape.

House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said the GOP, starting with the Republican Revolution of 1995, have “created an environment” conducive for corporations to break rules and escape penalties by repealing regulations and de-fanging the tax codes.

Independent pollster John Zogby recently found that voters no longer trust Republicans more than Democrats on economic issues. “The economy could be the sleeper issue,” Zogby told the Washington Post. “A lot of people, especially 401(k) holders, are scared.”