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WASHINGTON (TheStreet) — The Transport Workers Union claims two Teamster organizers admitted their union submitted forged signatures as it sought to gather enough signed cards to require a representation election among mechanics and related workers at American(AAMRQ.PK).
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters denies the charge. In an email, David Bourne, director of the IBT’s airline division, called it “a diversionary scheme to bring the Teamsters into public disrepute.”
Late Tuesday, the TWU filed documents including affidavits from two organizers, in advance of a National Mediation Board meeting Wednesday where board officials will hear challenges by the TWU to the signatures gathered by the Teamsters and by both unions to the list of eligible voters submitted by the airline.
In order to have the NMB call an election, a union must submit signatures from 50% plus one of eligible voters.
The meeting had been scheduled for July 16, but was delayed at the Teamsters’ request, a TWU spokesman said. The TWU did not say how many signatures were forged. The bargaining unit includes about 11,500 mechanics and related workers.
Names and titles have been redacted from the affidavits. In one, the IBT organizer said, “There were multiple cards from the same workers with different signatures (and) there were authorization cards from at least 1,500 workers who had never been seen, spoken to or assessed.” He said the person who submitted the cards had been sent from Tulsa to another site to work for six months before resigning.
In the second affidavit, an organizer said he was told that rather than visit workers another organizer “sat in his car and filled out house call sheets and falsely signed authorization cards.” He added, “I was also told that there were situations where one card came in from the real worker and another from (redacted) and they could see the signatures were different.” But “IBT chose to ignore the issue,” he said.
In its filing, the TWU said “these reports do not come from unidentified ‘spies’ placed by the TWU into the IBT’s operations, but rather from professional organizers from the IBT organizing department. One of these organizers was directly involved in the IBT’s raid on the TWU, and the other was in regular contact with IBT organizers and professional staff involved with the campaign.”
The Teamsters have called the charges “utterly baseless” in a filing.
“We deny any wrongdoing or knowledge of wrongdoing in the campaign by American Airlines mechanics and related workers to achieve Teamsters representation,” Bourne said. “TWU is desperately trying to maintain a membership that is no longer interested in its concessionary, failed representation.
“The NMB is conducting its routine eligibility verification process and we trust its findings will finally clear the way for the workers at American Airlines to choose new, strong representation,” he said. “Our focus has always been and remains achieving the highest standards and protections for aircraft mechanics and related workers.”
On May 28, the IBT announced that it had submitted an undisclosed number of signatures in support of a representation election at American. On May 7, the union said it had submitted 2,800 signatures from about 4,500 US Airways (LCC_).mechanics and related workers, active and inactive. A month later, the NMB announced it had set the dates for a union representation election at US Airways. Voting began July 8: votes will be counted August 12.