In their latest assault on collective bargaining, House Republican leaders are holding hostage the latest extension of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding—a move that has forced the furlough of 4,000 FAA employees and jeopardized 90,000 airport construction jobs. These tactics a re costing the nation $200 million a week plus the costs to our economy of idling tens of thousands of workers. Congress must take up and pass a clean FAA extension to ensure the safe and efficient operation of our aviation system and to preserve almost 100,000 American jobs.
Over the last three years, Congress has extended basic funding for federal aviation programs 20 times without controversy. The latest House-passed extension includes a policy rider to cut support for Essential Air Service (EAS) programs in rural America. This hostage-taking tactic is clearly designed to force Senate Democrats and the president to accept the House-passed repeal of National Mediation Board (NMB) union election rules that was inserted in the House FAA reauthorization legislation.
The NMB rules, which were reformed last year, simply allow aviation and rail workers to elect unions under fair and democratic procedures whereby a majority of those workers that cast a vote decide the outcome. In contrast, House Republican leaders would have us return to the old, undemocratic rules that required more than 50 percent participation among all eligible employees and counted every worker who did not participate in an election as an automatic vote against the union. If the aviation and rail union election rules being pushed by House Republican leaders applied to members of Congress, not a single House member in the 112th Congress would be in office today.
It is appalling that House Republican leaders would use FAA employees and construction workers as ransom for a completely unrelated attempt to gut fair union election rules. Fortunately,the Obama administration and Democratic senators are rejecting these sinister tactics. We applaud the president and Senate Democrats for expressing their support for a clean extension of FAA programs, for putting these laid-off Americans back to work and for protecting the rights of aviation and rail workers to form and join unions under fair and democratic standards.
The AFL-CIO urges the House Republican leadership to end this irresponsible strategy and immediately send a clean FAA funding extension to the president’s desk. We also call on Congress to complete a multiyear FAA bill that invests in our aviation infrastructure and air traffic control technology, enhances air safety and rejects assaults on collective bargaining and the right to organize.