www.goiam.orgTuesday, November 26, 2002
IAM Members at
UAL to Vote November 27
The nation’s second largest airline sustained unprecedented financial damage in the travel recession following the terrorist attack on Sept. 11. Annual losses exceeding $2 billion in 2001 are expected to repeat in 2002.
Members of District 141 and 141-M will vote separately on whether to take part in a plan that includes modifications to hourly pay and vacation.
Additional information about the proposals is available on the two district websites at www.iam141.org and www.iam141m.org. Results of the all-day vote are expected late on the 27th, or early the next day and will be posted on the district websites and at www.goiam.org.
IAM Eyes Pact at Triumph Spokane Plant
With word of Boeing’s decision to sell the Spokane plant to the Triumph Group, the IAM is prioritizing issues for a first contract and plans to work aggressively to ensure that members have the opportunity to work for the new company and continue in their highly-skilled jobs.
”Our members in Spokane have lived with uncertainty for far too long,” said District 751 President Mark Blondin. “Now that the new employer is identified, our focus will be on obtaining an agreement that gives our workers guaranteed wages, benefits and working conditions. We look forward to building a working relationship with the Triumph Group that will protect our members' interests and ensure this company prospers so these jobs remain for years to come.”
A Thanksgiving
Message from the IP
Thanksgiving in
America is not all golden browned turkeys, steaming mashed potatoes,
chilled cranberry sauces and fresh garden salads – at least not for our
eight million unemployed. For them, Thursday means a very simple fare.
The thanks they give will be for the hospitality of friends and
relatives, the charity of neighbors and complete strangers, the health
of their spouses, sons and daughters, and the strength that their belief
in the Almighty gives them. For them, Thursday means a very simple
prayer.
And yet, in this land of plenty, those who have a job and those who do
not are separated by just three words: “we are sorry ___.” Each employer
fills in the blank differently, but the end result is the same.
The employed and the unemployed are not two distinct classes, two
warring segments of society, two vastly different kinds of people, or
even two contrasting labels – the lucky and the unlucky. They are simply
this: all Americans.
So, on Thursday, let us pause to give thanks for what the Almighty has
given us – a streak of good fortune, a patch of hard times or something
in between – and to pray that better times are just ahead for all
Americans.
Then, next week, next month, next year, let us turn that simple prayer
for better times into an agenda for action. Let us work harder to make a
good job with good wages and good benefits a reality for all
Americans.
Congress Cuts Unemployment Benefits
The move means critical unemployment benefits will run out during the Christmas holidays for eight hundred thousand U.S. workers, including tens of thousands of airline workers laid off in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
House GOP leaders rejected a last minute opportunity to extend benefits. They refused to act on a Senate-passed measure to add three months to the expiring benefit period. “The Republicans stopped it dead in its tracks,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), of the parliamentary maneuvering that kept the proposal from a vote by the full House.
The cold shoulder for the unemployed was in sharp contrast to the warm reception given to corporations. Lobbyists won a loophole in a current law that prohibits government business with companies that move their headquarters offshore to sidestep U.S. tax obligations.
Additional provisions in the Homeland bill gave drug companies protection from lawsuits and established funding for Texas A & M University to ‘study’ the subject of homeland security.
Jim Brown Named to Midwest Territory Post
Long
time IAM member and District 9 District Business Representative Jim
Brown has been appointed to serve as Administrative Assistant to General
Vice President Alex Bay.
Jim joined the IAM in 1963 and began a career as a trade unionist that
now spans three decades. Initiated into Progressive Lodge 41 in St.
Louis, Missouri, Jim started work as an apprentice machinist at
Continental Can Company. In 1977, he went to work for Anheuser Busch in
St. Louis.
Jim became an IAM organizer in 1978 and was elected Business
Representative the following year. Additional leadership positions
followed including election to the IAM Law Committee in 1996 and 2000
and president of the IAM Tool and Die Conference. Jim currently serves
as President of the Missouri State Council of Machinists and is an
Executive Member of the Missouri State AFL-CIO.
District 20 BR Re-elected to WVA House