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ATLANTA (WUPA) — A group of workers at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport are celebrating a major milestone: ratifying the first-ever union contract for technicians operating the airport’s plane train across terminals.
Ninety airport workers are covered in this agreement. Their union, the Transportation Communications Union/IAM (TCU/IAM) says the negotations were successful because of the gains they made in employees’ wages, procedures for grievances, and in how quickly they were able to turn this agreement around.
“At the end of the day, it was workers sticking together for a common goal and the mission was to get as strong of a contract as we could…” said Matt Hollis, the national president of TCU/IAM.
Terms of the workers’ union contract include: an 18% wage increase with retroactive pay to April, 3% raises each year and a $2,600 ratification bonus among others. The union also negotiated enhanced procedures for members to be able to express grievances at work.
“We didn’t just mean…work rules, or just mean wages,” Hollis said. “We made a solid agreement as long as it took to get an agreement that contained work rule enhancements, real provisions of a contract, as well as desperately needed wage increases.”
The technicians that operate and manage the plane train voted to unionize and join TCU/IAM last August. Hollis says that the fact that they negotiated a contract in under a year is also an accomplishment.
“If you look at across the country, the typical timeline is that it takes well over a year to reach a collective bargaining agreement. And that’s for the unions that actually get a first contract. It’s kind of an alarming statistic of the number of bargaining units that are formed that actually never reach a first contract.”
Alstom issued a statement to CBS Atlanta saying in part that it is glad to have reached an agreement with the workers’ union, and that it values its relationship with its union partners.
Hartsfield-Jackson Airport has not responded to CBS Atlanta’s request for comment.
The union says workers still want to make improvements the next time they negotiate their deal, particularly in improving healthcare and making even more wage gains. A smaller set of Alstom employees at the airport that unionized with TCU/IAM in February are still negotiating their deal.
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