Mayday! May I have another?

We celebrate another Mayday in the Old Pueblo, and our mothers at the union are cooking up their old tricks to steal your money again this fall. This time they plan to dismantle the Machinist's trade, and redistribute the money around the lower pay grades at the expense of the other classes. Are you ready to see the union tell you "The Company" wants to do away with certain trades within the machinists, and they want to combine the skills. Of Course, they want to pay the low skill schlubs the high dollar that the metrology and Tool and Die Makers get. You know what that means for the rest of us? NO Pay Raise, again, like 2003! Oh, maybe there will be, but it will be small, because they are going to take money that you WOULD HAVE gotten in a GWI, and redistribute it to them. How's THOSE Socialist apples for ya? If you complained about the 2003 contract when you got no raise, then stand up and fight these peckerwoods about this one, because BOHICA! Happy Mayday! Oh, and Happy Mother's Day Too!

No IAM! You voted for CHANGE, and Got It!

 

https://twitter.com/iam933org

When the Union voted for Change in 2014, they really meant it! Wow, they are on a down hill run real fast. They've lost their web site, and some URL hawker has purchased it and loaded it in the Virgin Islands! It's going to cost Mr Martinez to buy it back. Lucky for him, the value is real LOW!

 

www.iam933.org 

How much of a chance does this group of clowns have at getting you a good contract this fall? I hope you like Obamacare! Don't even dream of them getting a raise. Word has it that this union is going to reduce the machinist's trades and give a fat raise to the illiterate at the expense of the rest of the work force...again!  Didn't you guys learn in the contract of 2003? The union is looking to bargain again, and what did you get out of the deal? Oh yea, pass through language! Bend Over, Here it Comes Again!

Pandoras Little Box

 

Did the NLRB Just Make it easier to De-Unionize Raytheon? 

A decision this week by the National Labor Relations Board could make it much easier for groups trying to eliminate unions to get a foothold in large defense manufactures like Raytheon, which have thwarted de-organization efforts by the Ousties group at WWW.IAM933.NET for years.

Since the employer has the burden of showing that a bargaining unit is too small and that a larger group already shares the “community of interests” labor laws require, it removes much of the discretion the NLRB had to reject small bargaining units from breaking off from the larger union and makes it harder for employers to argue against de-unionizing subgroups of the work force.

The decision represents the lack of focus of Democratic appointees who took charge at the board after the President’s recess appointments were rejected. The chairman Mark Gaston Pierce wrote his opinion and he was joined by Nancy Schiffer, a former AFL-CIO assistant general counsel, and Kent Y. Hirozawa. They intended on helping the effort to unionize labor groups within larger companies like Wal-Mart one classification at a time, but failed to recognize this legal loophole permits this to work both ways.

Testers and Metrology-Calibration Technicians at Raytheon have been stifled from removing themselves from representation by the IAMAW Local Lodge No. 933 in the past. This new development may lead to a new opportunity to liberate ourselves from past strangleholds.

Pay me your dues and feel the respect

Come to me my little children, come and recruit more members to pay me for the deeds I do for you. You poor unfortunates deserve better, and only I can deliver the prosperity you deserve. Join me, and pay me your dues, and I will make all of your problems go away. For membership is down. Participation is waning. Leadership is rebelling. My webmaster is delinquent in upkeep of his page. My DBR is in limbo, but you my little polyps can pay me your dues and feel the respect. Come join a committee, be a trustee, become embroiled in the politics of entitlement and envy. The old guard has retired, now the stoic militant remnants whisper the doom of the lodge, the fate of our future is lost to the petitioners who exposed our tricks; to steal wages from the workers; to buy votes of the masses. We stole wages from many to benefit a few, the few who we knew would pay us their due.

Drink your Milk my little Pretties!

Happy Labor Day! Welcome one, welcome all to the continuing circus known as the International Association of Minions and Wannabees Union at Raytheon in Tucson. In Feb 2008, this blog posted an announcement that anyone who was unhappy with the union, simply wear and orange t-shirt on Thursdays, the same day that the union wore their union blue. Over the years they responded with red superchicken shirts, Ghostbusters shirts and silly rat buttons. And their stewards intensely trained their minions that any opinion outside the soviet camp was just not healthy for them. Times sure have changed! How many of you have noticed that the union members are parading around the plant site wearing orange t-shirts? Why would they change colors? Why would they wear Orange? Did they think there were a lot of members who sympathize with the Oustie struggle to make wages fair at RMS? Maybe, but that doesn't fit the union model. Throughout American History, unions struggled to LOWER wages of the most skilled workers, to give it to the unskilled. We call it the misguided Robin Hood syndrome. This union did it well in 2003, and then made the membership feel like it was the Company's fault. But I digress. Could the union have been invaded by some covert Ousties who used whatever tricks they thought it would take to get the union to let their colors run, and put on the colors of their opponents? Maybe... We've had our moles in the past. One of the guys in 811, a metrologist was implicit in sharing info with a cal tech that exposed lots of embarrassing facts about this union. Too bad for them, he was never discovered. Thank goodness for him, they still think he is untainted. But why is the convergence of Orange t-shirts in both the Ousties and Union groups? I suspect the Union thinks they can drown out the impact and stigma of the Orange T-Shirt having to do with the black eye they suffered when their union was dealt a decertification attempt. They think they can hide behind false pride by wearing the colors that shamed them. It wont fix the fact that every technician on the plant site gets ripped off every paycheck because the Union stole their wages and handed others a lopsided payraise in 2003, while everyone else got zero GWI for three years. And so it continues. Are you paying over 800 dollars a year in dues and paying about 3000 dollars a year subsidizing your coworkers? An especially Happy Labor Day to You!

Are you concerned?

Is there a Union at Raytheon? Yeah? Really? Are you protected by a contract? Huh? What contract? Oh!! The one you voted on last October, but have never seen! Doesn’t it seem to you that the IAMAW Local 933 has dropped the ball on providing you workers the representation you pay dearly for? Some of you are paying over a thousand dollars a year and for what? There ain’t no contract! Three whole months have passed and nobody has a printed copy of the contract! There isn’t even a downloadable copy on the Union Website. So what are you paying dues for? Does it feel good? Yeah, you’re getting the shaft. Too bad you didn’t vote for the decertification effort back in ’09. Three thousand bucks in dues later you must be wondering if it was a mistake to have backed up these guys. What did they buy you? Did they get you any benefits more than the lowest paid salaried worker? No? But the witless protection is worth the investment! Isn’t it? You’ve got that contract to fall back on…right? Yeah, I thought so.

Will you support the Strike Vote

Doing Twice the Work? Job at Risk? Will you support the Strike Vote? Did you ever feel like you are doing twice the work, but you are not getting paid for the increased effort? This is the message that the Union has been placing all over the factory these days. Funny how they are coming around to asking questions about wages eight years late. Where were they back in 2003 when they gave the work force a ZERO PERCENT raise for three years? We didn’t forget. Wages are an important part of the rift between college educated and highly skilled workers at Raytheon, and the members of the bargaining unit that got hefty raises at the expense of the rest of the work force. Electrical Technicians, Mechanical Service Technicians, Machinist Technicians, Prototype Tool & Die, Metrology, Calibration Technicians, & “Engineering Test Technicians” deserve an upward wage adjustment. The union wants our support, just like they would like yours. Power in numbers they say. Yep, I have to agree, there is power in numbers. When they repair the pay injustices of the past few contracts, they can count on the support of the very people with the brain power to help them most! Raytheon has an evolving workforce, and you can bet your bottom dollar RMS won’t replace product test specialists with others of equal caliber. NO, they are replacing them with this robot you see here. However, they will be hiring “Engineering Test Technicians,” Metrology Service Technicians, and Mechanical Service Technicians in the future, to replace those talented workers that over time will go out the door into the sunset. But the Union has ignored these technicians. Continue this trend at your own peril IAM 933. The type of workers who depend on the union are becoming less and less desirable to Raytheon as new hires, while the technicians who stand the most to gain from Raytheon’s 21st century improvements are ignored by the Union. Guess which high demand employees aren’t running down the doors on Ajo Way to join the Union? That increases the likelihood of another petition to decertify the union as the pendulum of time erodes the union’s majority. So while your Union is asking rhetorical questions like “is your job at risk?” or are you doing “Twice the Work?” They need to ask themselves “Can we afford to ignore these technicians any longer?” This weekend the Union is conducting a strike vote. Go vote! That’s the patriotic thing to do. As long as your most skilled workers are ignored, you stand a ZERO PERCENT of successfully conducting a strike against the Company. And if you do strike, the hundreds of workers who voted to decertify this union will work diligently to make sure a petition is circulated during the strike to eliminate the source of the injustices we have all suffered over the past three contracts.