Their feeling is, 'This is my only chance to get a job in this industry again, and I'm taking the job of a worker who miscalculated and walked off the job,' |
They almost see their job as a property right. |
They are trying to do an end-run around the union and go directly to the membership, ... They believe that what they're doing is acceptable to the membership, but not to the leadership. |
They don't want to ruin a good thing, but at the same time, they don't want to lose a good thing. |
They're also doing it in order to show if you go on strike, this is money you're going to be losing. |
They're doing it to appeal to the younger workers. |
This is a small union, and it doesn't have any allies, because it's kind of a pariah in the labor movement, |
This is not going anywhere, ... This is not going to be settled. |
This is payback time for AMFA. That's the way the labor movement is looking at it, ... Raiding is a sin, and [they believe] AMFA raided and won [by] saying it would never accept concessions. It'll be much easier for other unions to tell members that they must accept concessions if AMFA was killed for not doing it. |
This is probably as bad as it gets for a union leader. He's in a fight with no allies. |
Traditionalists didn't see any reason for it and saw it as a challenge to real collective bargaining. Over the years there has been a rethinking of this idea. |
What they've done is really almost jump-start reconsideration of health care benefits, |
Workers have got to be asking themselves, what do we have to do? |