2010 COPE Report

The TWU COPE Convention was held in Washington DC from April 26th through April 29th at the Liaison Hotel in Washington DC. In attendance from this Local were John Johnson, Johnny Griffith, Tom Tkadlec and myself.

The Following is a brief out line of day-to-day speakers and activities.

Day 1, April 27, 2010

• Jim Little
• Call to order, opening remarks.

• Harry Lombardo
• Spoke on the need Federal mass transit subsidies, the Alliance with Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and Rainbow Coalition.

• Joe Gordon
• Spoke on the need to fund COPE.

• Jim Little
• Stated he was disappointed with Obama health care solution
• Unemployment, layoffs, and service cuts amount 11 million jobs lost
• The AFL-CIO plan for economic recovery calls for rebuilding infrastructure, government aid, job creation and TARP money
• Transportation is central to economy

• Alex Garcia (acting COPE Director due to Hubert Snead illness)
• COPE fund at highest level
• State TWU conferences are an ongoing successes

• Portia White DLPA (Department of Legislative and Political Affairs)
• Developed COPE agenda by marrying resolutions from conventions up to bills
• HR915 FAA reauthorization passed House and Senate waiting for conference
• Passenger rail has 100% buy American provision
• EFCA stalled

• Ray LaHood (Secretary of Transportation)
• Transportation is the economic engine
• Obama administration reached deal with NATCA after 100 days after being stalled with Bush for 5 years
• For the first time Labor had seat at US-EU negotiations
• Congress now forging final FAA Reauthorization bill
• “Built in America” high speed rail provision

• Warren George (President Amalgamated Transit Unit)
• Cities are running out of money for surface transit
• Need to redirect money from capitol funds top operations expenses
• If city population more than 200,000 cannot use capitol funds for operations, Carnahan bill would allow “flex” for those funds

• Ed Wytkind (TTD)
• NMB rule on organizing under the RLA most undemocratic rule
• We must stop foreign ownership of airline
• We must stop foreign airlines from servicing domestic airlines
• We must not let airlines become a victim of reckless foreign trade policy
• We support for H.R.4788, "Aviation Jobs Outsourcing Prevention Act"
• 71% of A/C maintenance outsourced, planes maintained in El Salvador, with no FAA oversight, no drug/alcohol testing
• House version of FAA reauthorization must be enacted
• Need safety standards for F/A safety, must comply with OSHA standards
• High speed rail is on course
• China and other trying to steal high speed rail development in this country
• RLA representation elections, no where else does failure to vote count as a no vote, no where else does an election require a majority of all eligible voters, we must support NMB initiative to change RLA representational election rules

Meeting with Kay Granger and Rachel Carter, in attendance Gary Moffitt, Johnny Griffith, Bill Seely, Tom Tkadlec, John Johnson, Jim Germaine (Local 565)

This is at least my fourth meeting at Kay Grangers office; however, it is the first time we have met with Congresswoman Granger herself. Previous meetings have been with Legislative Assistant Rachel Carter. Our delegation found Congresswoman Granger to be interested and concerned about the future of the AFW overhaul base and our membership. We explained the impact of foreign repair stations on the highly skilled aviation jobs being put at risk by foreign repair as well as the risk to aviation safety by lack of FAA oversight, lack of drug/alcohol testing and lack of security checks on workers. Congresswoman Granger is a Republican and has voted against us on nearly every labor related issue that has come before her, nonetheless, we felt that the depressed economy has her more inclined to listen to the issues concerning working men and women and to be somewhat more concerned with labor issues. ***

Meeting with James Decker for Michael Burgess, in attendance Gary Moffitt, Johnny Griffith, Bill Seely, Tom Tkadlec, John Johnson, Jim Germaine (Local 565)

This is at least my fourth meeting at Congressman Burgess’ office. We have yet to meet with Congressman Burgess, we met with Legislative Assistant James Decker. In many ways this was the least productive of the five meetings we had. We arrived slightly early and were almost immediately hustled out into the hallway; I suspect Mr. Burgess did not want other visitors to see Union representatives in his office. Then, we were further disrespected by being shown to barren and empty (empty except for somebody’s lunch scraps left on the table) meeting room on the next floor up. Mr. Decker seemed the least interested in anything we had to say of anybody we met with over the three days of the convention. ***

Meeting with Eddie Bernice Johnson, in attendance Gary Moffitt, John Johnson, Jim Germaine (Local 565), Bob Zimmerman (Local 565) and Tom Carlin (Local 513)

Eddie Bernice Johnson has been a longtime Democrat and representative of Congressional District 30 (primarily southeast of Dallas) and although we have few members in her district she was gracious enough to meet with us. She has supported organized labor on almost every issue before her. She has previously received COPE money and we are working to ensure that she will continue to receive COPE money. She was very receptive to FAA Reauthorization issues and committed to support the House version of the FAA Reauthorization ACT. ***

Day 2, April 28, 2010

Meeting with Michelle Chin for Senator John Cornyn, in attendance Gary Moffitt, John Johnson, Tom Tkadlec, Bill Seely and Johnny Griffith

We met Legislative Assistant Michelle Chin in Senator Cornyn’s office, Ms. Chin happens to hold a PhD. We found her to be interested and receptive to our issues, she requested some statistical analysis on the effects of foreign maintenance on aircraft safety in order to help demonstrate a measurable impact. I am currently researching her request. ***

• James Oberstar (chairman of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee)
• Spoke on surface transit and FAA reauthorizations

• James Dingell (Longest serving member of Congress)
• Civil engineering report grades dams, drinking water, dams, levees, bridges and roads an average grade “D”
• We need to build and rebuild
• We are investing less than ½ of what is needed to fix infrastructure, need 2.5 trillion
• Jobs are cure for recessions, rebuilding infrastructure creates jobs
• Bush deregulated Wall Street, how do you protect the people from wealthy wrongdoers if you don’t regulate them? Banks can make money honestly without skinning the investor

Meeting with Andress Boggs and Patrick Mullane for Kay Bailey Hutchison, in attendance Gary Moffitt, John Johnson, Tom Tkadlec, Bill Seely and Johnny Griffith

We met with Andress Boggs and Patrick Mullane in Senator Hutchison’s office. I have met with Andress Boggs on previous visits to Senator Hutchison’s office. Mr. Mullane led the discussion and was perhaps, initially, the least receptive and most openly hostile to our position of anybody we met with, he was also the most knowledgeable and well prepared on the issues. He referred to equivalent standards for foreign repair stations as a jobs protection issue in the thinly veiled guise of aircraft safety. Comments that were not well received by this delegation. He also argued against the NMB RLA proposed election changes stating the voting procedures in the Senate (which require a 60% vote of all Senators to invoke cloture) as the precedent that justifies the NMB voting rules. Another comment that was not well received by this delegation. Nonetheless a good discussion was had and appreciated by both sides. I do have to conclude that there is no chance of changing Senator Hutchison’s voting pattern. ***

Day 3, April 29, 2010

• Jim Little, call to order

• Open mic, member reports

• Laura Richardson (California, Congressional District 37, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure)
• Was early sponsor of EFCA
• If we fail to pass House version of FAA Reauthorization it will go down as a disgrace
• California has robbed transit funding to balance budget, need to ensure transit money gets spent on transit
• Co-sponsor of Carnahan bill HR2746 to allow flex spending of transit capitol spending on operations
• High speed rail needs to be US built
• Buy American means compliance with Davis-Bacon Act

• Tony Harris (Legislative liaison to majority whip Jim Clyburn)
• Politics is an instrument or tool
• Need for membership engagement
• Need for members to be registered to vote

• Gwen Dunevant (TWU COPE Field Director)
• Gave COPE report

• Portia White (Department of Legislative and Political Affairs)
• Gave elections 2010 update

• Adjourned…

*** The local presented an eighty-two page booklet at each congressional office visited outlining the TWU position. This booklet is available upon request.

Various supplemental information was provided by the TWU International, this information is available upon request.

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