Will a membership rebellion remake the IAM?

THE NEXT big blue-collar union to toss out an entrenched leadership could be the International Association of Machinists.

IAM Reform has tapped into rank-and-file anger over a disastrous concessions contract extension at Boeing, the high pay and perks of top union officers--including exclusive use of the union's Learjet, which costs $1 million per year to maintain--and incumbent President R. Thomas Buffenbarger's nepotism.

Voting is being held at IAM local lodges throughout April. Unofficial results from the big IAM local lodges at Boeing plants in Washington state show a huge lead for reformers. Union members at one important local lodge report having to wait in long lines for the chance to vote on April 9.

If the insurgents win, they would follow the example of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and, more recently, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) in kicking out long-established union machines and replacing them with new leaders committed to rebuilding union power.

The election for top officers in the IAM comes as the result of a Department of Labor ruling to uphold a complaint by United Airlines worker Karen Asuncion, which charged the International with violating the democratic rights of members when it prevented a competitive union election for president and other top offices in 2013.

When the Labor Department ordered a new election, Jay Cronk, who had been on the staff of the IAM for more than 20 years, stepped forward to run against Buffenbarger--and was promptly fired. Since then, he's been back working on the railroad, rebuilding air brake valves on the Metro North commuter system that covers New York City suburbs and Connecticut.

It wasn't a difficult transition, Cronk said:

I've always been a part of the membership. I've never looked at myself as being above. I didn't do anything but serve them. They paid my check. They were my boss, and I had a good relationship at every level, and they would speak freely to me about their opinion of things that were good and bad.

Their complaints all seemed to be the same, and that was that our dues were too high, and our executive council was too big, and they were overpaid--their life was too extravagant, their expenses were too high. If [union officers] spend more in meals in one years than the average member earns in a year, we've got a problem.

GIVEN THE few short months it had to mount a campaign, the IAM Reform slate might have expected to at least do well among railroad workers, the industry where the union originated. Railworkers are fed up with the union's neglect--Buffenbarger even abolished the union's rail department several years ago, even as rail carriers ratcheted up the pressure for more productivity from fewer workers.

Airline workers in the IAM have plenty of beefs, too--particularly at United Airlines. In that carrier's merger with Continental Airlines, the union agreed to toss aside United's collective bargaining agreement, built over 60 years, in exchange for the thin contract in place at Continental, a weak agreement that was a legacy of that airline's 1980s union-busting boss Frank Lorenzo.

But it's the rebellion at Boeing that has given IAM Reform a fighting chance to capture the union's top offices.

When Boeing management proposed last fall to reopen the union contract to demand sweeping concessions, workers voted by a two-thirds majority to reject the proposed 10-year deal--which included the creation of a lower-tier workforce and steep cuts in pensions.

Boeing went on the offensive, threatening to move production of the new 777X aircraft out of Washington state unless the IAM caved. The corporation's political servants, led by the Democrats who dominate Washington state, echoed the blackmail.

But it was Buffenbarger's betrayal that turned the tide. The IAM International demanded another vote on a barely changed contract--on January 3, when the Washington plants were just reopening after a holiday shutdown.

Rank-and-file activists sprang into action--including Shannon Ryker, who launched the Rosie's Machinists 751 Facebook page to argue against the deal. But it wasn't enough under the rushed circumstances. The concessions contract passed on a second ballot, by just a few hundred votes.

But even those IAM members who changed their votes to "yes" didn't do so because of loyalty to Buffenbarger. They feared that 10,000 jobs for the planned 777X would go to a nonunion plant in South Carolina instead.

Jason Redrup, an elected business representative for IAM District 751 and candidate for IAM International General Vice President, summarized the impact of the concessions ratified at the start of January:

With nearly 8,000 members not voting, we are now forced to live under a contract that eliminated pensions for all, more than doubles health care costs, slows wage growth by 75 percent, and keeps us from returning to the bargaining table until 2024. This came not when Boeing was hurting, but enjoying record profits and backlogs.

Also, keep in mind that this is not a company that was going bankrupt; it's a company that's extremely profitable, with record sales and profits...We've got to wage a fight to nullify the January 3 contract and to defeat this contract in a new vote. This wholesale attack on our union, on the labor movement as a whole, cannot stand.

THE CHALLENGE to the IAM leadership is the product of a long decline in a union once known as the "Fighting Machinists."

In recent decades, union officials have tried to cling to "partnership" with management, but at the cost of often crippling concessions. The IAM claims a membership of about 575,000 members, but only 338,815 are active—putting the union at little more than a third of its size in its heyday decades ago.

United Airlines mechanics, frustrated by an endless series of givebacks, voted out what they derided as the "Frightened Machinists" in 2003 and went with a craft union instead, before eventually joining the Teamsters.

The Great Recession and its aftermath saw the IAM retreat further. At the Mercury Marine boat engine plant in Wisconsin, the union agreed to a contract that slashed wages by 30 percent and froze them for seven years. The union also agreed to a seven-year wage freeze at Harley-Davidson, plus higher health care costs and a provision allowing the company to hire casual workers for lower pay and no benefits.

Even after the recession receded, the IAM had no strategy to stand up against highly profitable Caterpillar, which extracted major concessions from the union after a 15-week strike in 2012.

At Boeing, however, the picture was different. Despite the reluctance of IAM officials to confront the company, a strong tradition of militancy and solidarity led to strikes in 1989, 1995, 2005 and 2008. In the run-up to the last walkout, the rank and file put pressure on International officials to act, with daily lunchtime rallies that drew as many as 7,000 workers.

The IAM had leverage at Boeing because the company, despite outsourcing at home and abroad, still relied on workers at unionized plants to assemble aircraft. But with the opening of a nonunion South Carolina plant to assemble the Boeing 787, the company could at last threaten to build airplanes at a nonunion facility.

The IAM's response was to seek a National Labor Relations Board ruling that construction of the plant represented an unfair labor practice. But the IAM dropped the complaint in 2011 when the company agreed to source production of the 737 airplane in Washington state--in exchange for a four-year agreement with modest wage increases and higher health care costs for IAM members.

Then, just two years later, Boeing demanded that this same contract be reopened--and this time, Buffenbarger and the top IAM leadership didn't even pretend to be on workers' side. For the IAM leadership, continued partnership with Boeing was more important to the survival of the union as an institution, even if it meant a radical cut in the living standards of the next generation of Boeing employees.

As a result of the concessionary contract extension, Buffenbarger's support among Boeing workers--the traditional base of the union leadership--has collapsed, opening the possibility that the first contested union leadership election in more than half a century could end in defeat for the old guard.

WIN OR lose, IAM Reform has already had an enormous impact. It has forced an open debate in a union where International leaders have lived lavishly, in increasing isolation from the deteriorating conditions facing union members.

The upheaval in the Machinists comes from the same sources as the sweeping change in the leadership in the ATU, the historically conservative union that represents bus and train drivers in many U.S. cities.

New ATU President Larry Hanley, a longtime supporter of labor solidarity and progressive causes, has sought to reinvigorate a union that is under harsh attack from recession-driven budget cuts and privatization. To that end, the union brought some 400 members to the recent Labor Notes conference to discuss what unions need to do to change the labor movement's direction.

Similarly, the new president of the APWU, Mark Dimondstein, has initiated a campaign to unite the four postal unions in a common fight to defend the U.S. Postal Service from plant closures and outsourcing. He spoke at Labor Notes as well.

Plus, there's discontent in the Teamsters union, where big locals in Louisville and other cities have refused to ratify concessionary local agreements with UPS. Even in the auto industry, where the 2009 bailout wiped out thousands of jobs and union conditions, there are new centers of activism as workers feel their power amid a sales boom in autos.

The development of IAM Reform is part of this broader trend. Whatever the outcome of the International election, keep an eye on blue-collar America--a fightback is brewing.