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.

Step right up, its show time!

Step right up ladies and gentlemen! It’s time for another fabulous shew!!! This contract season we have a variety of talented story tellers to make you foam at the mouth and buy your way back into the Union because you just realized how much you hate the Company! How much baloney are you ready to eat when the Union says the Company's profit mongers will force those funky twelve hour shifts on you while they cut the wages that you earn working from five PM till 5:30 AM? By the time November rolls around, you are going to be delerious. While Chacha is riding a unicycle on top of the tight rope, she's preaching that the managers don’t want to give premium pay for those long shifts. Are you ready for the BIG DISTRACTION Leigh will use to sell you out? When the negotiating committee accepted the twelve hour shifts they didn't fight for the values they claim to defend. Now the Union is getting ready to shaft the workers, threatening a pay cut on the premium pay for those long shifts. If this was an issue, they should have held out and got it in writing that this would not be a permanent working condition on our workers. Once upon a time, unions fought to stop abuse, but these guys will divert your attention and sell out, again and again. Get ready, because there's a twelve hour shift coming to a product near you! Your brave negotiating committee is going to fight tooth and nail when the Company plays the factory cards and shows a full house of 2+3+2 schedules that will demoralize you and turn you into a zombie robot. Here...it...comes...I can hear it now; "If you freeloaders would join the union, we would have the power to get a better deal." The problem isn't the Company, clowns. It’s the way IAM933 does its monkey business. The Union will still screw the workers, no matter how hard they fight, because they can’t see when the Company negotiated for those twelve hour shifts, they openly admitted they under pay the talented workforce that saved their contracts! Its time this Union demonstrated to us non members that you have the smarts to fight for the right causes instead of the dumb ones. There are hundreds of us non members who feel that we could do our own negotiations better than this union has done over the past three or four contracts. Can you do better?

Angry Members = Non Members

Over the past few years the Ousties have adjusted their position to with the Union, prodding it to do a better job of representing the workforce. After the end of the petition drive back in 2009, we tried to figure out the best way to help the people who have suffered the most under the lodges blundering mismanagement of our trades. Recently the subject of the IAMAW Constitution came up. It appears that our local lodge has failed to demand use of its constitutionally approved job titles to identify its own workforce while bargaining with the Company, causing a drastic moral problem while permitting an unjust pay scale to continue. The workforce is angry.

While the Ousties argue whether or not the wages for lower skilled jobs were purposefully raised at the expense of higher skilled jobs, one thing is certain; the Union botched it representational duties when it tried to protect a small number of workers, and in-turn, did a grave injustice to the majority of technicians during negotiations that reduced the number of trades in the workforce a few contracts back. The meetings between the Union officials and a small number of Ousties in 2010 confirmed this problem and the Union side admitted it was fully aware of, but had been unable or unwilling to resolve yet. The problem is related to the general shift of wages that occurred during the combining of trades that created the “Assembly Technician” position, along with the “Product Test Specialist.”

According to the 2009 IAM Constitution, the definition of a Technician is a person who has served an apprenticeship of four years or completed college or vocational training in a particular field or has acquired a fundamental knowledge in the fields of aerospace, electronics, atomic energy, or other related fields or divisions of the machinist’ trade. The expectation required is equal to that of a Journeyman, but in a different skill set. A Specialist is a person who is employed in a particular branch or subdivision of the machinist’ trade, or a person who performs a particular line of work commonly recognized as work connected with the trade but requiring less general knowledge of the trade than a Journeyman (or Technician).

IAMAW LL933 turned this upside-down when they named all Assembly Specialists as Technicians, and demoted all the Test Technicians to Specialists. And they did a similar distortion to their pay too. Within each of these groups, there are members who do meet the constitutional requirements for their respective rating of Specialist or Technician, based upon their skill set. This distinction was never dealt with. As a result, members in both groups were given an unfair deal. Specifically the Prototype Technicians were robbed of the huge raise given to the other Assembly Techs. Electronic Test Technicians with component level troubleshooting skills were insulted when Test Specialists pay was raised to their level.

One solution is as simple as creating multiple pay grades within many of the trades represented within the workforce, depending upon need. Or create pay grades irrespective of trade, and have certain trades occupy a range of pay grades. Promotions are earned by individuals who work more demanding positions within their trade and can demonstrate proficiency to the satisfaction of an agreed upon authority. There are a number of crafts within RMS that could benefit from this proposition.

Skilled workers doing tasks beyond their job titles agree, for example: Prototype Tool & Die, Metrology Techs & Cal Svc Techs, PTS, Process Techs, Assembly Techs, & Prod Machinists should be evaluated for possible ways to meet increased needs for more capable workers and compensate those who meet the challenge. CEP has proven to be a colossal failure, and both the Union and Company are responsible for that mess. Crib sheets and unethical help by insiders gave unqualified workers advancements over others who were more deserving in the past. Why insult high skilled workers by paying low skilled workers the same wages? We need comprehensive pay reform at RMS. It needs to be fiscally neutral to the Company, but beneficial to those who worked the hardest to get skills needed by Raytheon the most. Bring back sanity to our job titles and pay scales.

Spades

Its time to call a spade a spade. For over a year, the workers at RMS have patiently waited for the union to defuse the differences between the Ousties and the Union. Apparently, they don't feel it is needed. They let henchmen visit this site and attempt to sabotage it with frivolous talk and vulgar racist xenophobic accusations. So today I decided to drop a hint. We Ousties are still here, we have a voice, and will use it. Union members are free to post here, but the sick trolls won't get their message through. You trolls want free speech? Go make your own blog! The rest of you are still free to comment here.
I was approached last week by a Union member who is sick and tired of being sick and tired. The Union lost this worker's trust, and they will speak with their wallet. So they asked wery wery quietly "how do I get out of the union?" Well I answered the question and then I smiled to myself as I know there are more coming. I wonder how long it will take the other Ousties to feel the friendliness of this former Union member after they stop listening to the rhetoric? Lets watch, shall we?
On a different sunject, the Union is blasting the Arizona Congress! They have a link on their website that goes to an AFL-CIO website with critique of some new legislation being considered by the State. Here are a couple of their slanted comments posted against new legislation. Behold, the phrase "paycheck deception bill!"
SB1325: UNION DUES; POLITICAL PURPOSES A paycheck deception bill targeting all public and private employers, requiring “each person paying the dues or fees to designate the types of candidates, legislation or issues or a political party to be supported” before any dues may be deducted for “political purposes,” loosely defined. Also requires unions to set a cap on the percentage of dues spent on “political purposes” annually at the time employees give their authorization.
SB1365: PAYCHECK DEDUCTIONS; POLITICAL PURPOSES A paycheck deception bill targeting all public and private employers: requires notification to business and workers of the percentage of dues spent on “political purposes;” requires annual sign-off on dues deductions used for “political purposes” in an effort to create new bureaucratic obstacles for unions; and requires immediate termination of deductions whenever employees choose to resign union membership. Charities and other organizations are exempted from these requirements.
SCR1028: PAYCHECK DEDUCTIONS; POLITICAL PURPOSES; REQUIREMENT A paycheck deception bill targeting all public and private employers, requiring annual sign-off on dues deductions that will be used to pay for any “political purposes.” (Identical to HCR2032, not listed here)
If you like what the State Legislature is doing, let your steward know. Ask him to forward the info to the top. Let them know that you don't like them spending your dues on politics.

Vote Eduardo President?

Eduardo wants to be president. He is a real nice guy, very friendly. But on his flier, he said “United we stand,” but with whom? Based upon the color contrast of his fliers being posted all over Raytheon, I suspect Eduardo may like the Communist Party. Maybe you should go for one of the other candidates if you like the Union. Keep Eduardo for a beer drinking buddy instead. That way his activities with radical left wing organizations won’t tempt him to use union assets to forward his political agenda.
Here are a few comments to go along with his flier, just for Eduardo’s entertainment.
Your Union was declining in membership at RMS. What did you do to fix it? New growth is from organizing other sites. Raytheon remains about where it was three years ago.
You were in poor financial shape – couldn’t afford arbitration – couldn’t afford training, so you raised the dues by fifty percent! Thanks from the working class!
You were facing an aggressive union busting effort. You beat back the union busters & their attack on your union? What, with ghost busters t-shirts and rat buttons? Not exactly. We passed out petitions, we didn’t get enough signatures. Our efforts were not effective enough Eduardo, neither was yours.
You still claim you won the Lawsuit. I say you didn’t. The retirees did. Why don’t you to dispute my post from this blog dated Aug 25, 2008. Good luck on that.
Your accomplishment reads “With your help, we have successfully negotiated a contract”? How does that make you the best candidate for President of the Union?
You claim “We are ready for the next contract negotiations.” Really? Are you going to fix any of the things we complained about? Is ignoring the Ousties worth round two?
You say “We are ready for a strike should the company push us with take-a-ways.” No way! A Strike? Surely you know half your members would cross the first day if you dared. And what-if the Ousties organize a counter-strike? How effective will that make you? You should concern yourself with satisfying the Ousties biggest peeves. This union had a transformational experience last year. It not only has to deal with the company, but with other represented employees that are still angry with it. It affects the union’s potential for effective negotiations. There were a series of meetings early this year with a couple of the Ousties and some of the Union leadership. Your lack of regard for the union is demonstrated by your never going to these meetings. So I ask, why do you want the membership to vote for you Eduardo?