Second Page
Karen Belcher and David Lyall showed up at the Bus yard at midnight. Tony Magee was there when we arrived, Mike Ramos showed up soon after. Mike was to be the morning observer, Tony will do the afternoon.
The NLRB agent brought up the issue of the tour drivers who work 7 am till 7pm and informed us that the hours cannot be changed unless all parties agree to it. The Company reps, who never introduced themselves to us, acted innocent about the whole thing of course. I conferred with Tony and discovered that there would be two or three drivers affected this particular day. The Laughlin tour usually has one driver. A second driver is put on if there is an overflow crowd. The drivers in the lounge decided that this would probably not happen on a wednesday with the Rodeo in town.
The voting place was set up in the training room. This is directly off of the mini bus dispatch room. The Gray Line room, in other words. This was good fortune. I went over to the Motor Coach dispatch room on the other side of the building to find out the morning schedule. There are actually 8 people scheduled to arrive between 5:45 and 7:00. The 7:00 Laughlin driver was a replacement for Mike Ramos. The 7:00am report, or available driver was not determined to be someone likely to vote at all. The other early drivers were determined to have assignments which would get them off in time to vote.
The final determination was that there were two drivers who we wanted to vote but who needed to come in an hour to an hour and a half early to be able to vote. Tony called one of them at 1:15am or so and will call the other at 4 am.
The afternoon voting was scheduled for 1pm-5pm. Karen and I showed up at 12:30 but the company reps did not get there until 12:50. Mr Gordon, personnel director then appeared. Eddie Keyes was the only IBT rep at first. Tony Magee was our observer for the afternoon, after Mike Ramos did the dark am shift.
The counting started off with a bang. One UTU rep would count IBT ballots and one Teamster the UTU ballots. Each counter is to call out when 50 votes are tallied. Allan (Sec-Treas of Local 105) does our counting.
At 5:30 the IBT rep calls '50' for our first mark. The IBT had 14 votes at this point. The next mark is reached at 5:40 when the score is UTU 100 IBT 41 Company 2. The IBT reached 50 at 5:46, when the UTU had 114.
Subsequent scores: 125/57 130/65 136/70 140/71
At 5:54 UTU reached 150 to 74 IBT and 3 No Union.
Final tally: 164 UTU
76 IBT
3 None
There was one spoiled ballot, a UTU voter who wrote "UTU" on the back instead of marking the box on the front. Musta been a former trainman. (joke)
The total ballots cast: 246 out of 381 eligible to vote. This last number was supplied by the HR director at the very end and had been something which we were trying to figure out for two weeks. There were 398 names on the excelsior list.
Everyone shook hands, with some apparent bad feelings on the part of the company reps. The Teamster Sec-Treas was amiable. He had a nice embroidered jacket also.
**** Some reflections after the vote, jotted down at Mamacitas cuban restaurant. ****
There were 5 or 6 Teamster members at the vote count. They were bitter at the result. One said "well, it was nice working here" This guy was joking across the room with Mr Gordon (HR) in the final stages of the vote. Joking about the check being cancelled. Hehe.
I told Eddie Keyes (#3 IBT steward at KT) after the voting that he would need to run for a vice-chair seat now. He said "We'll see how this all works out" Mr Keyes is a good unionist and will probably be a good UTU activist, if not an officer (Vice-Chair) for the charter (former KT) drivers.
The Teamsters were complaining about some group of their drivers who were unable to vote for some unknown reason. As the hours of the poll seemed to have been agreed between the IBT and Coach USA to their benefit this gripe seemed rather hypocritical. The NLRB agent said "winners celebrate, losers gripe"
The Van driver turn out was reported to be very good. (Tony and Mike Ramos reported this) I was glad to hear this as William Koehn and I had considered them to be our hole card. As the maintenance crew were considered to be somewhat in our favor (this only by hearsay) I assume that the vote by the KT drivers (now known as Charter Operators), such as it was, went IBT by a small margin.
This brings us to the next steps. Negotiations for a new contract covering everyone, of course.
A very important next step however, is Union building. The Charter drivers (former KT) seem to feel that they will get screwed by the Gray Line tour drivers. Carrying out a re-building of a new local, encompassing all the work units in the leadership, is very important. Getting a study group together to discuss the seniority issues is step number one. I think that inviting people to participate in this discussion should happen even before elections for the LCA/GCA.
(Local 105 did not have it's regularly scheduled LCA elections in November due to the uncertainty of the representation elecitons.)
A further note: The ticket agents at the airport have not been in any bargaining unit. The last evening that Will and I were out at the airport we spoke with some new ticket folks that we had not seen before. They are a likely group to organize now. Under Gray Line they had the same benefit package as the drivers. This included fully paid health benefits for the employee. They were recently told to start paying for their health benefits as required by the KT Services teamster contract. The company line was that the Union issue made this necessary. They reported that the impression they got was that the Teamsters would be the new union and that those benefit levels would apply to everyone.
This did not make them happy and they probably do not feel that Coach USA will provide for them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
respectfully submitted, J. David Lyall
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created: December 25, 1998
modified: Monday, 02-Jul-2007 12:45:30 PDT
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