Union ad targets lawmakers who voted for FAA compromise

The union that represents flight attendants said Wednesday it would remember how lawmakers voted in the past week on a funding bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that makes changes to labor election rules for transportation workers.

The House and Senate both approved legislation, which President Obama is expected to sign, that provides nearly $16 billion per year to the FAA through fiscal year 2015. The agency has not had a multi-year appropriations bill since 2007.

But the parent group of the union for flight attendants, the Communications Workers of America, launched a newspaper ad Wednesday targeting the members of Congress who voted against the FAA bill, which it has called "anti-worker."

"Is democracy a choice between jobs and workers' rights?," the CWA ad asks. "157 House and 15 Senate Democrats said 'no.' The rest of Congress made the wrong choice, and too many were silent.

"This should have been a jobs bill, not the opportunity for an ideological assault by the 1 percent," the ad continues. "The assault on workers' rights that began in Madison [Wisconsin] is continuing, paid for by the 1 percent. The 99 percent will fight back. And we remember those champions who stood with us this week." 

At issue is a change to the rules for union elections for workers covered by the Railway Labor Act, which includes most airline employees. Under the compromise, 50 percent of a company’s workforce would need to support unionization for a vote to take place, up from the current level of 35 percent.

Democrats have said the deal is better than a previous Republican effort to overturn a 2010 rule set by the National Mediation Board (NMB) that changed the counting of non-votes in union elections to “no” votes. But House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has claimed the change to the rules for union elections is a significant reform of labor laws in the United States.

“House Republicans achieved reforms that reinstitute the majority-of-eligible threshold at an earlier stage in the process, eliminate a union tactic to force run-off elections, and implement new levels of transparency and oversight at the NMB where previously there was none," the Speaker’s office said in an email.

The CWA ad lists all the members of Congress by name who voted against the final FAA bill. Obama has until Feb. 17 to sign the compromise legislation before the beleaguered agency's funding runs out. 

The CWA's ad can be viewed here. 

---