April 16, 2024

Well, its mid-April, nominations have closed, and we have about two more weeks before the acceptance period closes.  As we get closer to ballots, I do intend to put out more stuff, but my main focus the past 3 weeks has been to start reaching out and having conversations with members.  I am awed, but at the same time saddened at how many have similar viewpoints, are frustrated and angry with where our Union and our profession is currently at.  I don’t need to make a video every week or send something out constantly to tell you what you already feel everyday at work.  I visited ZNY, F11, & MCO recently and then came to the realization that my time would be better spent making myself available to talk to individual members.   I will still be visiting DCA, PCT, the Command Center, and BWI near the end of April.  But instead of visiting facilities, I have been slowly emailing each of you to see if you want to have a conversation.  I am about 5 percent done with the list, so while my hope is that I get to reach out to each of you, I may not be realistically able to before ballots go out.  So, if you get an email from me offering to have a conversation it’s not a blast email, it is a singular email directly to you and I will make myself available.  If you don’t want to wait until I get to you, your more than welcome to send me an email at Mike@redmond4evp.com and I will do my best to get back to you in a timely manner. 

Otherwise, for the most part my website already has my experience, what I see as issues, some of the items I want to focus on, and my beliefs. Outside of that, my campaign is and will continue to be about simplicity, getting us back to the basics of being a Union, and bettering our working conditions, work/life balance, and pay.

Our Union is currently at a point where it seems like it can’t do simple things without conflict and the current executive board clearly can’t agree on anything except on who they align with.  Our Union can’t even unite at a national level and they are all thinking that you need to vote for them, and they will fix it.  Yeah, somehow even though most of them have been in office for at least 1 term, some 2 terms, seem to think that the next term will be different.  These board incumbents or rep on detail out traveling to facilities are talking about how the sky is falling if certain people get into office.  They are talking in circles with no plan, and flip flopping all the time, and now they are somehow going to fix it.   Guess what, the sky has already fallen on our workforce, but the board is too self-centered to see it.  THEY ARE LITERALLY IN A POSITION TO FIX IT NOW and they have been for some time, but apparently only during election season does it seem like they care.   Our members are smart, they read through the BS, stop treating them as anything less and start coming up with tangible plans.   The issue is they can’t because they are not living what we are living and are grasping to understand it.  That is why you see them just attacking one another and changing stances all the time.

Anyway, through my conversations I have been asked what my stance is on a few things and what I intend to do if elected. So here it is:

The first thing if elected is to work with Justin, Rich, or Nick (or anyone else if they were nominated) to ensure that the new executive board understands its role and responsibility of representing the membership first and foremost.  If that basic understanding does not seem to be comprehended, then I would bring in mediators and labor specialists from the AFL-CIO to assist in ensuring that our house is in order.  We must be transparent and honest with the membership, the board should be held to the highest standard, and the only way we do that is sharing information with the members of what happens, not that we gave a congressman a tour.

Secondly, I would do everything in my power to get us back to the table, whether we extended or not.  We would do this through the President and the EVP going to meet with the Administrator and the Secretary of Transportation to show the data and accurately depict the dismal situation in the field.  They would need to explain that we are no longer competitive in the Aviation industry and that the only way to properly retain people is to address the pay, working conditions, etc.  If the Administration wants to continue to have economic growth from the Aviation Industry they are going to have to make the investment, and it’s going to have to be dramatic, similar to reclass in the 90’s.  This is regardless of who is in the white house, as I truly believe if we stay status quo the system will breakdown in the next 3-5 years.   

If there is no movement by the administration, we would need to get back into the media like we did in the mid-2000’s, utilize picketing, put pressure on Congress and the Senate, some of the things we were so great at 15-20 years ago.   This would have to be done prior to 2026 and really should have already been started.   Obviously, there would be much more to all of this, but that is the generality of my beginning plan.

Even after this we would need to continue the work with driving change in the FAA with premium pays, work/life balance, aging facilities, poor treatment of workers, etc.  There is a lot of work to be done, there have been years of neglect and going backwards in our work environment, so we must stop that and then start improving it.  Nothing is going to happen overnight; my goal is to move us in the direction that we deserve as the world’s busiest most complex Air Traffic System in the world.  They have said we are the safest and busiest for decades, but they have never said we have the best work environment, pay, and benefits, so that’s my goal.