Delta Ramp Workers Organizing Committee

Union organizers starting new push at Delta

But history suggests they will have a tough job winning support
By RUSSELL GRANTHAM
The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionPublished on: 10/17/06

Brian Vaughn, a ramp worker at Delta Air Lines, acknowledges that efforts to bring his colleagues into a union haven't gone well in the past. In 2000, only 18 percent of Delta's ramp employees voted to join a union.

But after years of deep job, pay and benefit cuts under Delta's restructuring in Chapter 11, Vaughn thinks this time may be different.

He and other organizers think Delta's 6,000 ramp workers will feel safer with a labor contract if the airline merges with another carrier, as well as with retirement benefits from the union's pension plan.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced Monday that it has begun a nationwide campaign at the largely nonunion airline, working with employee-organizers like Vaughn.

"It will be a hard fight," said Vaughn, but "we hope we've made them more aware of the importance of a contract."

How soon such a drive might lead to a vote — or whether it will get that far at all — is unclear. Unions first must get at least 35 percent of eligible employees to sign cards as proof to federal labor regulators that support is strong enough to warrant a vote. Union officials said they began distributing cards Monday and hope to petition for a vote by January.
A Delta spokeswoman said the airline believes its ramp employees don't need a union.
"Delta has long valued a direct relationship with its employees, and we will continue to work directly with them to make Delta a great place to work," said Delta spokeswoman Gina Laughlin. "We will continue to listen to our people and address their concerns together."

Rampers, the same group now targeted by the IAM, in 2000 rejected representation by the Transport Workers Union by a wide margin. Flight attendants also turned thumbs down on unionization in 2002.

The airline's only big unionized group is its roughly 6,000 pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association. The pilots were at one time the highest-paid in the industry, but their pay has been halved and their pensions are slated for termination under concession deals the union reached in the past two years.

The IAM has about 100,000 mechanics, flight attendants, ramp workers and other members at United, US Airways, Northwest and other airlines.

Asked whether Delta believes its pay and job cuts and other cost-cutting moves will make it more difficult to defeat union drives, Laughlin said, "Certainly we have had to take difficult steps in our reorganization, but many of our employees understand that our restructuring is necessary and on the right track to making Delta viable for the long term."
Vaughn, 38, has worked at Delta since 1987. He said Delta rampers are smarting after thousands of job cuts and pay cuts of roughly 20 percent that have dropped their salaries from the top of the industry to near the bottom.

He said the Machinists union also has something that many Delta employees may want since the airline froze their pension plan at the end of last year as part of its restructuring — an industrywide pension plan.

"They have a pension plan of their own," he said, "and it has $8 billion in it." The union says its pension plan has a surplus, unlike most carriers' plans.

Delta's freezing of most employees' pension plans meant the plan and all accrued benefits remained intact, but benefits stopped growing. Delta expects to create a so-called defined-contribution plan similar to a 401(k) retirement plan to cover employees' future retirement benefits after it emerges from bankruptcy, possibly in the first half of 2007.

IAM spokesman Joseph Tiberi said more airline employees have shifted into the union's pension plan as a result of bankruptcies and other restructuring moves. He said about 14,000 IAM-represented ramp workers, reservation agents and other employees at Northwest Airlines are expected to switch to the union's pension plan after that carrier emerges from bankruptcy.
"We believe in the future this will be the only defined-benefit plan available" in the airline industry, said Tibiri.

Aviation consultant Robert Mann said IAM's pension plan could raise its odds of winning Delta ramp workers' support.

"That could gain some traction because [pensions are] a concern for midcareer people," he said.
He said multi-employer pensions such as the IAM's have long existed as a way to diversify union members' retirement security beyond a single company's fate. With some ailing companies now moving to lighten their pension loads, the IAM sees a way to grow, he added.
"I think they just see an opportunity. They know the companies want out" of their pension plans, he said.