The IAM recently filed a lawsuit against the GOP-led National Labor Relations Board, alleging that NLRB exceeded its authority by declaring an IAM bargaining unit at Boeing South Carolina invalid.
The NLRB recently ruled that the IAM can’t unionize the 176 flight line workers at the Boeing South Carolina campus. This voided a Regional NLRB decision and the IAM’s 2018 win at the North Charleston, SC facility.
“It will be an important decision if the court reverses the board, as it should,“ said IAM General Counsel Mark Schneider. “But at the end of the day it’s about vindicating these workers’ rights to have a union.”
We are challenging a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, which nullified an election won by Boeing South Carolina Flight Line workers to be represented by the IAM. https://t.co/N7DGTht7HO
For the core team who fought most for a union at IKEA’s distribution centers in Minooka and Joliet, IL, it wasn’t easy going back into work after the vote didn’t go their way in 2018.
Out of nearly 200 workers, they had fallen short of joining the IAM by just seven votes.
“That next day, going into the warehouse was a little rough,” remembers Randy Holloway, a general warehouse worker. “We all walked around with a target for a little while.”
Holloway, along with a close-knit group of workers at the plant in Chicago’s suburbs, had been on a mission to hold the Swedish-founded multinational to its lofty corporate culture. A large poster in the 1.25 million-square-foot Joliet facility proclaims, “Create a better everyday life for the many.”
IKEA, the world’s largest furniture manufacturer, is growing its footprint in the United States. Besides the company’s more than 45 U.S. retail stores, IKEA has grown its capacity to handle burgeoning e-commerce orders.
The new Joliet distribution center replaced a smaller facility in nearby Minooka, which was operated by a thirdparty logistics company. The gleaming new building has the capacity to unload the equivalent of 22 ocean liners an hour, using “radical ideas and technology beyond anything IKEA has done before,” a company official said at the opening ceremony in October 2018, a few months after the narrow union vote.
To help the new operation get off the ground, warehouse workers from other IKEA distribution centers across the country were dispatched to Joliet. The IAM represents IKEA distribution center workers in Georgia, Maryland and New Jersey.
During the campaign in Joliet, IAM workers at other IKEA locations wrote a support letter to Illinois workers, saying that the “strong IAM contracts we have negotiated are not just words on paper—it has given respect and fair treatment on the job.”
“They pushed our inside team to stay on board and keep pushing for the IAM,” said IAM Special Representative Dennis Mendenhall.
The campaign to bring the IAM to Joliet had new life. With help from the IAM Organizing Department, the IAM Midwest Territory, the IAM Woodworkers Department, District 8 and Local 701, cards were collected to hold a new union election at IKEA Joliet.
Freddy Gonzalez, another outspoken advocate for the IAM within the plant, got his motivation from within.
“My drive is my family, my kids, my girlfriend,” said Gonzalez, who has educational certificates but has bounced around from job to job seeking stability. “We’ve been through tough times and it was because I didn’t have a voice on the job.”
His family was moving from house to house, struggling to pay the bills and keep their heads above water financially.
“It was breaking me as a man,” said Gonzalez.
The peace of mind that comes with a union job has been tough to come by in Will County, where lower-wage distribution jobs are filling the gap left by decades of factory closures. Thousands of families were raised on solid IAM jobs at Caterpillar’s Joliet plant, but the company sent the last vestiges of that work to Mexico last summer.
Nearly 280,000 Illinois workers left manufacturing between 2010 and 2015, according to a 2016 report from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute. Of the 40 percent who found new jobs, 21 percent went into transportation and warehousing. “The vast majority… suffered a pay cut,” says the report.
Retailers like Amazon, Target and Walmart have a significant warehousing presence in the Chicagoland suburbs, but attempts to organize a union in Illinois and nationwide have been largely stifled by anti-union campaigns.
Things are supposed to be different at IKEA, which preaches through its “IWAY” code of conduct that “the IKEA business shall have an overall positive impact on people and the environment.” IKEA dedicates a chapter in its guiding principles to freedom of association, in which the company specifically mentions the right for workers to collectively bargain.
“They had us all built up, like ‘Oh, it’s going to be so great with IKEA,’” said Holloway, who worked for a third-party contractor before IKEA took over the plant.
But workers became frustrated with what they saw as changing work rules, inconsistent policies and unequal promotion opportunities.
MARK McGUAGHY
“IKEA is all over the world—why can’t they have the same rules here as they have other places?” asked Mark McGaughy, another leader for IAM representation in Joliet.
After they lost the vote to join the IAM, other workers “were asking me all the time, ‘When’s the union coming? When’s the union coming?’” said McGaughy.
NICO FIGUEROA
For Nico Figueroa, who is supporting a wife and three children, the initial loss was not going to keep him from giving up the fight for a union.
“We just kept fighting,” said Figueroa. “Whatever they tried, we didn’t fold. My thing is, if you feel like you’re right, just keep going for it.”
FREDDY GONZALZ
Gonzalez sees it as his duty to lay the groundwork for future IKEA workers in Joliet.
“This isn’t just for my future. I want to keep this going for generations,” said Gonzalez. “My kid could end up working here and I want him to be able to say, ‘My dad helped create this and made this happen.’”
As IAM authorization cards streamed in for a second time, workers in Joliet had not only the support of IAM workers at IKEA facilities across North America, but IKEA workers around the world. Through the IAM’s affiliation with Building and Wood Workers’ International, workers in Illinois also had the backing of a global union federation with 12 million members.
Meetings between IKEA Industry officials and BWI representatives in Europe helped mitigate some of the worst anti-union tactics typical of management-driven union-resistance efforts in the United States.
The persistence and cooperation within the IAM and across borders paid off. After two days of voting in June 2019, workers voted 83-76 to join the IAM. It was the same margin as a year before, but this time working people will get representation.
Bargaining is scheduled to begin with the company in November 2019.
“The company has to listen now,” said McGaughy. “With a union—no matter how big or small the issue is—they have to listen to us.”
For Holloway—who supports five children, including a newborn son—this fight has also been about leaving a legacy.
“This is a story we can tell our kids—that we got a union in there,” said Holloway. “We wanted this job to mean something, so you know what we did? We organized.”
McGaughy says simply, “We’re making this a better company.”
IAM District 54 President/Directing Business Representative T. Dean Wright announced the appointment of Regina Wright as Business Representative/Organizer for District Lodge 54, effective January 1, 2020. Sister Wright has served as the District’s Communications Representative since 2012, and is a proud member of IAM Local 321. She also held the position of Communications Representative for the Ohio State Council of Machinists, winning a combined eight Wimpy Awards for her work.
She graduated magna cum laude from Xavier University in 2017 with her B.A. in International Business and Political Science. Currently, she is completing her Master of Public Policy with a focus in Workforce Development Policy from The Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. She has previously worked for U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown in Cincinnati, OH and completed a fellowship for the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) in Washington, D.C. She is a fourth-generation union member.
“Our territory and union serve our membership best when the representatives reflect our diversity,” said Eastern Territory General Vice President James Conigliaro, Sr. “We are proud to have someone with a strong union background and education. She was raised in this union, is a member of this union, and now will continue to bring the resulting tools of her education to benefit our members and working families everywhere.”
District Lodge 54 will close out its 106th anniversary celebrating the appointment of the first woman to a staff position.
Buddy Boylan stands in the parking lot in front of his workplace at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral and sees opportunity with a recent uptick in activity.
“After the space shuttle program ended, it slowed down here quite a bit,” said Boylan, an IAM Local 2061 member who handles fuel and other propellants for space crafts. “But now it’s getting on a faster pace — things are really picking up.”
Just across the massive roadway that includes the rocklined “crawlerway” lanes to transport monstrous space crafts to a nearby launch pad, Local 2061 member Bob Ruckdeschel makes a similar observation.
“We’ve seen the worse of it and now we are seeing growth again,” said the non-destructive technician with AECOM, adding there have been some new hires and more business.
The buzz of passing vehicles and construction activity is an improvement from the years-long lull witnessed by longtime space center workers like Ruckdeschel and Boylan, also an AECOM employee. The two are among the roughly 1,500 IAM-represented NASA workers and contractors at the massive Central Florida campus that touches the Atlantic Ocean.
Membership includes electricians, mechanics, safety personnel and hospital staff at the Kennedy Space Center and the adjoining Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The area is home to many of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s historic exploration launches, like the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, which marked its 50-year anniversary in July. The campus, which houses hundreds of buildings and facilities for NASA’s space operations and support contractors, has faced some reshuffling due to years of federal budget cuts.
Today, the area is in the midst of a rebirth, of sorts. Large private firms, such as United Launch Alliance (ULA), Blue Origin and SpaceX are setting up shop or expanding there.
NASA has announced plans to go back to the moon and Mars in coming years by partnering with private companies. Such aggressive ambitions benefit the IAM, which is poised to organize scores of new workers connected to such missions, IAM officials say.
“For many decades, the Machinists Union has been synonymous with NASA and space exploration,” said Matt Griggs, Business Representative for District 75 in Alabama. “Our talented and experienced membership has aided with some of the earliest space explorations, and we expect to remain an integral part of missions to come.”
The construction activity at the Cape is an about-face from NASA’s slowed activity there amid a stream of federal budget reductions and the end of the agency’s storied space shuttle program in 2011.
Today’s activity is good news for the IAM, which has a longstanding part in the nation’s space exploration. The IAM is the largest labor union to represent NASA and its contract workers in places such as Alabama, California, Florida, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas.
Some of the benefits are already starting to show.
There have been dozens of new hires at companies like ULA, in addition to some strong collective bargaining agreements like the one covering the more than 300 employees from Local 2061 who work for PAE, Inc.
The workers for the base operations contractor recently ratified a three-year CBA with 12 percent increases over the lifetime of the pact, in addition to increases to the IAM retirement security plan.
Such a contract demonstrates the importance of the campus’ workforce, said Assistant District Business Representative Kevin DiMeco of District 166.
“This is an example of a contractor that wants to perform well here and wants a workforce committed to the job,” he said. “They’re the base operations and they cover a lot of area on that base to make it run. You want to have a good relationship and provide the services.”
IAM INKED IN AEROSPACE HISTORY
The IAM’s roots in space exploration date back many decades. Gigs, like maintaining radar tracking operations for space missions, handling fuels and other propellants for the crafts, in addition to assuring the complex 6-million-pound crawler-transporter rolls rockets and shuttles to the launch pad without a hitch, are among their responsibilities.
NASA’s exploration missions usually partnered with names such as Boeing Co., Radio Corporation of America, General Electric and the now defunct Trans World Airlines. All employed IAM-represented workers.
The IAM’s presence also included some high-profile achievements like NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, which included the first-ever moon steps by astronaut and honorary IAM member Buzz Aldrin. His steps followed astronaut Neil Armstrong.
The July 1969 lunar landing was the achievement of a goal set eight years earlier by President John F. Kennedy, who challenged the nation to place a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
The IAM’s part in NASA’s missions lives on today with some of Kennedy’s words proudly hanging at the IAM’s District 166 hall in Cape Canaveral.
“Our nation is depending on everyone engaged in the space and missile programs to do all within their power to assure that work proceeds vigorously, economically and without delay,” Kennedy wrote then.
The walls also include several signed charters, many tied to aerospace missions that span from early days of the Gemini spacecrafts to the Apollo and later to the shuttle program. “We’ve been on the forefront of space since the 1950s and we are the leaders when we provide employers with some of the greatest skilled workers. There is a price in that,” DiMeco said.
“When there is something leaving the Space Coast, the IAM has had that mission in their hands.”
The walls at the IAM District 166 are just one example of the IAM’s longstanding presence in the nation’s space history, which touch on nearly every IAM territory.
For example, members of Local 743 in Connecticut were tasked with production of United Technologies Corp.’s custom-made space suits for astronauts in space shuttle missions.
Members of IAM Local 1786 in Houston played a role in the quarantine and decontamination process at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at NASA’s Houston Center.
There are members of Local 2786 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which is used for some ULA launch missions.
There’s also District Lodge 54-represented workers at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, tasked with various research and development projects.
MEMBERS ENCOURAGED BY A ‘SENSE OF PRIDE’
Retired NASA contractors like Murray Caldwell cite prestige connected to the nation’s history of space travel.
Caldwell, the former president of the IAM Local 2061, held various roles at the Kennedy Space Center when he joined as a contractor in the 1970s. Caldwell favored his role with quality assurance.
“You were very hands on working along with the people doing all the stuff,” he said. “We needed a quality assurance guy to make sure they met all the parameters.”
Conditions in the space program are not always ideal.
Current and former workers describe continual concentration on and awareness of some posed dangers. That includes maneuvering small spaces, in addition to handling chemicals and other dangerous elements.
Caldwell describes how machinists are drawn to such challenging jobs by a “sense of pride.”
“You’re really proud of your job, especially when they had the shuttles. You’d see the shuttle when it came back and we’d be out on the landing strip or out at Edwards Airforce Base where it was landing,” he said. “It was dirty by then and it had black marks all over it from re-entry and it was good to see it when it was ready to launch all pristine again.”
Larry Washam, a former worker at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., describes the importance of the work done at the facility.
The Machinists there were responsible for producing the lunar sample return container, also known as a “moon box.”
“A lot innovation came from the space program and that was one,” Washam said, describing the seamless metallic container used to assure lunar material returned to Earth remain isolated in case they contained harmful material.
IAM LAUNCHES INTO ANOTHER CHAPTER
The IAM members are not just resting on the past.
NASA’s years of retrenching hasn’t necessarily withered the union’s footprint in aerospace.
IAM Local 44 members in Decatur, AL built the ULA’s Delta IV Heavy rocket that carried the Parker Solar Probe to the Sun to explore solar wind speeds.
The craft was launched in 2018 with help from Members of IAM local 610 at Cape Canaveral.
IAM members also built and launched Juno, a spacecraft now orbiting the planet Jupiter.
The probe, which launched in 2011, was built by IAM Local 44 members at Lockheed Martin in Decatur, AL. It was also launched by Local 610 members at ULA in Cape Canaveral.
There’s more to come since NASA has selected IAM members at ULA to build and launch the Atlas V rocket to carry its next robotic science rover to Mars.
There’s been a flurry of other activity along the Space Coast.
Even though workers at companies like SpaceX are not organized, they’re tapping some IAM-represented labor for tasks such as tooling and handling propellants for space crafts.
That’s promising for spurring work for IAM members, and for potential organizing on the horizon.
“These new exploration missions will likely call for an expanded workforce at the Space Coast and elsewhere, all of whom would likely include IAM members,” said Johnny Walker, the former Directing Business Representative of District 166. “When space travel expands, the IAM grows with it.”
The July 1969 lunar landing was the achievement of a goal set eight years earlier by President John F. Kennedy, who challenged the nation to place a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
