April 16th, 2021

REPUBLIC MANAGEMENT’S LABOR RELATIONS ROADSHOWS EXCLUDES AMTS IN PIT AND CMH AND SIDESTEPS ANSWERS IN IND

Republic management introduced its new Director of Labor Relations, Ellen Hamm, who previously worked at Ford and Harrison. Ford and Harrison, if you remember, is the law firm that Republic hired to help them quash our efforts to form a union.

In PIT and CMH, only AMT leads and supervisors were invited to Ms. Hamm’s meeting. All other AMTs were excluded. The meeting centered on the question, “why do you want a union?” The problem is when you exclude the vast majority of AMTs from the meeting, how could you possibly get an accurate answer? This is a classic HR tactic. Get workers to believe that management is really listening and cares about our issues. If they really cared, they wouldn’t have excluded the vast majority of AMTs in PIT and CMH.

In IND, AMTs were somehow invited and asked questions. Ms. Hamm danced around a lot of the questions. AMTs asked if we can get answers in writing to our questions and were told by Ms. Hamm and management that they would get back to us. We haven’t received anything in writing to date.

We are not aware if Ms. Hamm has visited any other locations or plans to.

The reality is with a union, any and all of our issues, by federal law, would have to be addressed by Republic management and we would have the right to bargain contract language that would attempt to resolve these issues. We would also have the right to vote on a contract.

​The truth is Ms. Hamm and the rest of Republic management will “listen” to us and may even fix some of our issues. But, because we are not unionized and do not have collective bargaining rights, Ms. Hamm and Republic management retain all the decision making power and we must accept their decisions even if we disagree with those decisions.