CWA Prepares Challenge of Piedmont Election Results

After falling just short – 60 votes – of winning union representation this week, gate and ramp agents at Piedmont Airlines and CWA are preparing to challenge the results of the election.

Votes tallied by the National Mediation Board (NMB) on Feb. 19 showed that 1,228, or 47.6 percent, of the 2,574 agents voted for union representation. Under Railway Labor Act rules that govern airline union elections, 1,288 agents, or 50 percent plus one of all eligible agents, needed to participate in the election in order for the union to be certified.  Agents who do not cast a vote are counted as votes against a union under these arcane rules.

Piedmont Airlines ramp and gate agents from Charlotte (above) and elsewhere are seeking union representation.

Union supporters are reporting that many people whom the airline had listed as "union eligible" should not have been on the voting list – as many as 40 in one location alone.  Further, there are reports of many other agents who should have received voting instructions but did not, and who failed to receive the ballot materials even after requesting them from the NMB.  CWA is also looking into complaints of heavy-handed anti-union activity by some supervisors.  The union has seven days from the ballot count to file a challenge.

More than 62 percent of the agents signed union authorization cards when they petitioned for a union election on Nov. 21. Since the increased security brought about by 9/11, union organizers have had absolutely no access to airline workers who work beyond security gates. This has made union representation elections far tougher.  Also, the union activists were handicapped – as is the case in all NMB elections – in not being provided an address list of the union eligible workers; they had to build a contact list from scratch through one-on-one organizing at the worksite.

CWA-represented flight attendants and passenger agents at US Airways and Piedmont, who have access to the gate and ramp areas, provided major support in the campaign.