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Home > Topics > Organized labor Pilots Agree |
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Organized labor on the waterwaysThe Pilots Agree movement3 - Organizing at ARTCOMM&P has tried to continue their ARTCO organizing drive without Dickey Mathes -- they even hijacked the pilotsagree.org web site -- but they've turned out to be completely inept at organizing. Even organizers from other unions have criticized MM&P's handling of the river organizing campaign. Union headquarters in Maryland has sent monthly letters to ARTCO pilots, asking them to sign pledge cards and 'hang in there,' but ARTCO lawyers have so far successfully delayed attempts to call another representation election. ARTCO's anti-union campaign has hinged on trying to classify their pilots as statutory supervisors. Only non-supervisors are protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which prohibits retaliation and other "unfair labor practices" against employees who engage in organizing activities. In an organizing drive, companies often try to prove to the National Labor Relations Board that many of the employees involved are supervisors. ARTCO tried to do that even before the 1999 representation election. The NLRB ruled against them then, although management ended up winning that election anyway. Since then, the company has (illegally) tried to change pilots' job descriptions and duties to make them look more like supervisors. That's where the battle is stuck. Incredibly, the union has made no attempts to organize at any of the other barge and towing companies. Hundreds of pilots -- at dozens of companies -- risked their livelihoods by joining the Pilots Agree work stoppage in 1998. None of that potential has been exploited. The MM&P lawyers know the ropes, and they're making ARTCO go all out, legally. Or are they? Obviously, Archer Daniels Midland has more lawyers, guns and money than MM&P has. It might be more accurate to say that the company is making the union go all out. The company also has more union-busters than MM&P has union organizers. ARTCO can call on an Archer Daniels Midland "labor relations manager," a company vice-president, two port captains and an office full of flunkies -- plus a veritable army of captain/supervisors, if they can be marshalled. The union, on the other hand, has one inexperienced organizer, and ARTCO is only one item in his portfolio. MM&P seems to think that, once their lawyers beat the company's lawyers on the supervisor question, the ARTCO pilots will rise up as a liberated proletariat and vote yes in the next representation election. That's not exactly guaranteed. One pilot said recently he'd be surprised if the union had five votes (as opposed to 28 in the last election). The union is in its present predicament largely because of two blunders. First, in the complicated NLRB hearings and negotiations leading up to the first ARTCO election in 1999, they for some reason agreed to the company's request to include the pilot trainees (or 'Pilots-B') in the electorate. These were, in effect, hand-picked company votes. Second, after the election loss, the MM&P leadership dumped Pilots Agree leaders Dickey Mathes and Fred Hunter from the MM&P payroll. This was probably the result of a CYA effort at MM&P headquarters. There's no way they couldn't afford to keep them on; after all, the union has gone on to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on subsequent legal moves. This is typical of the so-called business unions. They rely on expensive legal maneuvering while failing to communicate effectively "on the shop floor." But the MM&P leadership is especially quick to spend money on lawyers -- in this and other instances. One wonders whether some benefit may accrue them, beyond the fuzzy feeling inside derived by protecting the rights of working people.
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