With the upcoming steering committee meeting on contract negotiations, and with our Union weeks away from filing section 6 (which is actually 156, see the link below for more details on the Railway Labor Act), I thought I would give you a little history on the first strike and the first PEB (Presidential Emergency Board) for the mechanics at United Airlines.
United Airlines has been on strike nine times since June 1951. The mechanics have been involved with five of those strikes for a total of 120 days.Oddly, in 1963 there were two strikes: one in August (two days), and another in September (one day). These strikes were born out of frustration from negotiations that started on March 1, 1962 and from the merger with Capital Airlines.
A Union bulletin dated August 1963 reported that the membership had voted to reject the agreement by a vote of 7,828 to 2,068. The National Mediation Board proffered arbitration to the parties. On the same day, the Union declined to accept the proffer of arbitration, and on September 9, 1963, the Board terminated its services under the Railway Labor Act. Subsequently, the Union set a strike date for midnight, October 9, 1963. On October 9th, President Kennedy issued an Executive Order establishing an Emergency Board. After review of the company's and Union's issues, the Board recommended that the mechanics receive a total of thirty six cents ($0.36) an hour pay increase from June 1962 to June 1966 starting with $0.12 retroactively on June 1, 1962.
Our goal is to negotiate a fair and equitable contract that provides for job security. We have gone from 15,596 mechanic's jobs in January 2000 to 4,721 in March 2009. We cannot afford to see these jobs outsourced to foreign countries. We need to do the American thing and create good middle class jobs here in the United States and help stimulate the US economy.
After being employed for almost twenty-one years, I still feel like I am on a roller coaster ride. It has been nonstop from the day I interviewed and the interviewer asked me what I might do if United mechanics went on strike back in August 1987. I gave him one answer. I would walk. Then in the 1989 contract, we got modest pay increases and no retroactive checks. Then in 1994, we began the ESOP where we finally got some job protections, but they cost us dearly. Then, in 2000, we got an industry leading contract through the PEB. Finally, we got the bankruptcy contract in 2006 where we were stripped of our contractual obligated pension. We need to band together to support our Union and stop this blood-letting. "Doug, Steve, Pete, Chuck-O,David, Monica, and Rabbit, some call him Pat, are counting on us" (to quote Dave's last blog). Again, it is about jobs, and enough is enough!
Total job losses at United Airlines January 2000-March 2009: 50,003
Total PEB's from 1934-2008: 35
Longest airline strike: 2,273 days (Alitalia IAM 9/3/93 -11/24/99)
Shortest airline strike: 24 minutes (American Airlines APA 2/15/97)
Jock
PEB Decision October 1963
PEB Decision December 2001
Railway Labor Act
