Delta Federation's poster on video games did not work well

Delta Air Lines aircraft are seen at Salt Lake City International Airport on July 5th. (Angus Mordant / Bloomberg News)

Eli Rosenberg

General mission reporter covering national and breaking news

9. May 11: 40 PM

"You know what sounds fun @ Delta," Rick Smith, a liberal podcast, tweeted . "Health Care. A Living Salary. Dignity. Respect. A voice at work. Safe working conditions. Retirement insurance. $ 700 is a great investment when you look at everything you benefit from."

The posters also drew attention from some prominent officials on the left, including presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) And Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio). The latter said they were "overbearing."

"A gaming system cannot give you: fair wages, health care, occupational safety, retirement benefits," Brown wrote on Twitter.

One of the most popular tweets of one of the posters was shared around 22,000 times.

But the reaction to the posters at Delta, where the work of organizing around 44,000 workers – separate campaigns for airline and ramp, towers and cargo workers, has been going on for many years, was not immediately clear.

James Carlson, coordinator of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers, the union that worked to organize the workers, said he did not know where the poster was distributed, but said an employee had sent it to him earlier. He said that Delta has his father's workroom with anti-union airmen.

"Someone is like what you saw today – a stupid offensive message about spending your money on a video game system instead of professional fees," he said. . "They are trying to interfere with the employee's exercise of freedom of association. And it's not allowed."

Delta Spokeswoman Lisa Hanna did not respond to a request to confirm the authenticity of the posters.

"Our employees have the best overall compensation in the industry, including the most lucrative profit sharing program in the world," a statement she distributed. "They want and deserve the facts and we respect our employees' right to decide whether a union is right for them. Delta has shared many communications, which at all makes it clear that the decision not to organize or not should not be taken easy. "

Carlson said that the work of reconciling staff began in 2013, a few years after Delta had merged with the Northwest, which resulted in the loss of the union for the Northwest's ramp service, customer service and shop workers. IAM is currently collecting signed trade cards from employees; Support from 50 percent of the working group would approve a vote on the association.

Delta has been notoriously anti-union for years, Lance Compa, a lecturer and work expert at Cornell University's Industry and Employment School, told The Washington Post. Compa said he was not surprised that the company had targeted Union quotas as part of the last campaign.

"Someone took it off the shelf," he said. "The issue of professional fees has always been something employers hammer on."

[Supreme Court rules against public unions collecting fees from nonmembers]

Compa said many large companies are hiring anti-union law firms and consultants to help them close down Union action. They also use strategies such as anti-union talks, so-called "captive audiences" meetings, where leaders try to warn employees about the negative effects of a union and one-on-one meetings.

"It's a multibillion dollar industry, Compa said." It's standard operating procedure for companies when workers start to organize. "

Carlson said Delta had met with employees to push back to the association campaign.

" They tell employees how bad the association is and how wonderful it is at Delta and why you do not need the union, "he said. If you are a flight attendant, you have an orientation before the plane. "

Compa said that US labor law makes it illegal to threaten or repress workers who form a union, but allows companies to predict negative consequences, such as job losses and redundancies. But the legal difference is not always ready for workers, he said.

He said he thought it was a more positive climate for organizing today when it had been for many years, saying he believes small but high-profile organizational work on digital media companies "It has all this wealth flowing to the top, and workers are starting to wait, wait a moment, we deserve some of that," he said. "The expectation was that [millennials] was very individualistic and they would not be interested in unionizing. But they have faced the same problems that workers in a subordinate employment relationship have always encountered – pressure for more production, more working hours … all the time with pay and benefits. "

A wave of union organized swept through digital media companies in New York over the past few years, including Gizmodo Media Group, now known as G / O Media, The Intercept, Vox and Vice, a small, but visible movement that showed a renewed appetite for unions among younger workers. 19659037] Over the past year, organization of workplaces has begun to show some power in Silicon Valley, where employees of companies such as Google, Microsoft and Salesforce have protested the company's policies and products in high forums, including petitions and walkouts. In March, the crowdfunding platform staff announced Kickstarter plans to unite, which would be the first for a professional technology company.

Delta's anti-union efforts include a slickly produced website, DontRiskItDontSignIt.com, which warns of "the dangers of IAM," – pointing to a Justice Department's investigation into a unionization effort in a separate company from 2015, and in vain and other investigations involving approximately a dozen local unions from across the country.

"12 Reasons not to rely on IAM with your money, Delta said.

Delta made $ 5.2 billion in pre-tax revenue in 2018, giving away $ 1.3 billion to its employees in bonuses, according to Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Union Trailers were quick to point out the company's financial success over the past few years – making $ 10.5 billion in revenue in the first quarter and so earnings rose 31 percent to $ 730 million, its CEO. Ed Bastian, eventually received $ 13.2 million in compensation in 2017.

Delta airlines, which averaged $ 58,000 a year, are looking for a pay boost to bring them in line with other competitor airlines such as United , American and Southwest, according to a fact sheet distributed by Carlson.

Earlier efforts to unite Delta air carriers, currently numbering around 24,000, according to Carlson, have failed over the years.

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