Now Meet The Real Family

Richard Anderson says it. Ed Bastian says it. You will hear it again and again over the coming months. “The union is a business, a group of outsiders, labor brokers who care nothing about workers, only about collecting dues, fees, fines and assessments.”

Don’t be fooled…a union is a membership organization. In the IAM, shop stewards are elected. All local union officers are elected. District and International officers? Elected. Negotiators? Elected. Convention delegates? Elected. All bylaws, all contracts are voted on by members. They aren’t determined by outsiders or corporate executives.

The union is a cause. The cause is making life better for working people and not just those at Northwest or Delta. IAM members have played a key role in the fight for unemployment insurance, social security retirement benefits, equal opportunity and anti discrimination laws, implementation of the Family Medical Leave Act. We at Delta have already benefited from the actions of millions of union members.

It goes even deeper than that. IAM members are heavily involved in their communities. It’s part of the culture, part of the DNA. It’s part of the family. If you visit goiam.org and search for IAM journal winter 2009, you will find a report on IAM members who are still rebuilding New Orleans through volunteer work. On Martin Luther King Day, 20,000 IAM members answered a call by Barack Obama to honor Dr. King’s legacy with community service activity. Go to localiam1833.org to see pictures of a dozen soon to be fellow union brother and sisters from MSP take the Polar Bear Plunge to benefit the Special Olympics. Try locallodge141.org to find out about the union’s Employee Assistance Program that has helped members escape addiction.

The IAM is only a business in the sense that every penny is carefully accounted for. Hedge funds, investment banks and Wall Street don’t drive the IAM…the members do.

Now that is a real family.