In my 20 years as a mechanic at United Airlines the issue of “raiding” has been tossed around as a smear and provocation by the incumbent union. Whenever rank-and-file workers show anger at the bargaining representative and start a “reform” or decertification/replacement effort, they are criticized by the leadership as misguided or worse—engaged in a “raid” of “their” union members.
The incumbent union leadership employs this “raider-baiting” method of argument as it seeks to confuse workers while it attacks their democratic right to choose their union representative. The hostility of incumbent union leaders, however, is more than hyperbole in a fight for survival. It is an anti-worker reflection of the ongoing crisis of a movement in decline.
The charge of “raiding” and “outsiders” was made at United Airlines against mechanics favoring a craft union. The longtime incumbent union, the Machinists (IAM), had been challenged by a small independent craft union, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) since the 1970s. The IAM never took it as a serious threat until the 1990s, when the industry’s fundamental changes and threats of outsourcing threatened job security.
The IAM played both the raider-baiting and outsider-baiting cards against a rank and file that was fed up with failed policies, top-down structure, and massive concessions. It didn’t work. In 2003, AMFA was finally able to boot out the IAM. It occurred during United’s record 38 months in bankruptcy.
Five years later, this March, with turmoil in the airline industry deepening, the much larger Teamsters (IBT) convinced mechanics and related employees at United to believe their claim that the IBT’s size could protect them in the 2009 negotiations and salvage the pension seized by a quasi-governmental agency in 2005.
While AMFA defended its incumbent position, it refused to use the raider or outsider charge against the IBT, despite its use of non-airline Teamsters to knock on doors of laid-off mechanics and cleaners. AMFA believed that the facts were the best argument to win.
Mechanics didn’t believe AMFA could defend their interests as a small, independent union. AMFA’s defeat at Northwest Airlines in 2006 trumped the fact that its members were the only ones willing to strike Northwest. The hard reality of AMFA’s limited ability to face a mercilessly restructured industry superseded members’ fears about the corrupt history of the IBT.
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Baiting has limited value. IAM used it. AMFA didn’t. The difference is that IAM poisoned the well so badly that few IAM local leaders ever practiced the labor principle that we should all see ourselves as lifetime members of a labor movement where the rank and file comes first, not union affiliation.
AMFA, on the other hand, since its defeat, has encouraged supporters and leaders to help the IBT with grievances and other issues. AMFA’s leaders understood that our differences with the IBT were secondary to our opposition to United’s management. If AMFA had followed the strategy of baiting it would have been hard to do so.
The raider-baiting tactic also undermines solidarity and unionism with non-union workers. Workers are not “owned” by their unions. It is disrespectful to imply otherwise. It plays into the hands of so-called “right to work” anti-labor elements. It’s why the AFL-CIO five-year jurisdiction rule should be overturned.
The experience at United shows that the issue of “raiding” has little impact on representational disputes. It may convince some to support incumbents. But workers will vote for any group that promises them more protection in the current anti-labor environment. And raider-baiting can lead to long-term negative attitudes.
The fundamental issue here is the right of self-determination for members to choose their own representative and leaders. It’s that simple. The outsider charge, of course, is easier to disprove. But the smear takes time to repudiate.
The charges of both raiding and outsider intervention are false and should be rejected by all those fighting for democratic unions. Labor activists—whether for reform or building independent unions—should reject using baiting tactics. They deepen divisions and make future unity difficult.
Labor needs to unequivocally support the right of workers to determine their own futures, including their choice of unions.
Malik Miah was a representative for AMFA Local 9 in San Francisco. The IBT split AMFA’s San Francisco members down the middle by last name, between Local 856 in nearby San Bruno and Local 986—nearly 400 miles away in Los Angeles. Miah is now a member of IBT Local 986.
...is still raiding. With only 12% of workers in the United States being unionized, raiding is pathetic. It's fighting for crumbs. Unions guilty of this practice (there are SO many) should be courageous enough to go after the non-union sector. Fight the real enemy, not each other.
We pilots of US Airways were surprised to find the door shut to us when we decided to change unions. Other unions were unresponsive to our plight, and as a result, we formed our own in-house union and decertified the incumbent. We are extremely happy to have made this choice and thus far it has proved to be a vastly superior track toward building a better life for all our pilots.
I absolutely agree that groups of workers should have the right to choose what Union they want to be in, or indeed if they do not want any union at all.
But the unions themselves also have the right to choose whether or not they want to be a part of that kind of activity, or not. Just because a group of workers want to shop around for other unions, it does not automatically follow that those unions must make themselves available to them.
Good solid principled trade unions need to make exactly that decision. Do we spend the time, effort and resources of the union (which are considerable) in swapping around organized sisters and brothers like baseball cards, or fighting each other for those members when a "deal" cannot be worked out ... or do we just stop the insanity.
