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Local 591 Administrative Executive Board Member Russ Dittmer
2023 Full-Year Lookback
I feel that it’s important to keep the Membership apprised of my activities as your Administrative Executive Board Member. My continuing goal is/was to provide you with that information on a monthly basis. Unfortunately, with the frenzy of activity and changes within Local 591 this year, I simply have not always had the time to write each month like I had hoped. Because of this, I am writing you a sort of ‘year in review’. In the future, I will continue to strive to write monthly updates when possible.
For those who may not know me personally, please permit me a short introduction. I am a 35-year (in February 2024) Aircraft Mechanic at ORD (nope, never once left my home station) and I have held various TWU positions over those years in three TWU Locals (512, 563, & 591) at ORD. Positions include Steward, Chief Steward, ASAP Coordinator, FAA Liaison, and Executive Board Member in two Locals. Because education is a passion for me, I was fortunate to attend the National Labor College while it was still open and earned my bachelor’s degree in Labor Studies. Later, I earned my master’s degree at Creighton University in Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. Just this winter I completed my studies and earned my Associate in Applied Business degree in Paralegal, which was paid for by the AFL-CIO free higher education for members program that I’ve spoken to in the past. I know that I use the skills which I have learned in all of those studies to advance the goals of the Members in Local 591 every day. Among other AFL-CIO discount and purchasing benefits available via UnionPlus, there are often excellent opportunities for both two-year and four-year degrees at reduced costs and also scholarships, both for you as a Union worker, and often also for your spouse & children because you are an AFL-CIO Union worker. The annual window for AFL-CIO Scholarships for Union families, with awards up to $4,000 closes at 12pm EST on January 31, 2024. The TWU Michael Quill scholarship application window usually opens in late January and closes in early April each year.
One of the highlights of the year for me both personally and professionally, and for Local 591, was in May when I flew to DCA to attend, as a panelist, the NTSB Roundtable: State of Runway Incursions - A Path Forward. To our knowledge, this was the first NTSB Roundtable on the critical topic of runway incursions to have a licensed Aviation Maintenance Technician (AMT) participate as a panelist. You can view the unedited video (approx. 4.5 hours) at YouTube here. A much shorter ‘highlight reel’ can be seen on our Local 591 YouTube channel. I wrote in more detail on this event in my May 2023 Lookback.
I had quite a bit of travel for the Local this year, logging 29 trips and 100 days on the road in 2023 from ORD to various stations and cities around our system, including CLT, DCA, DFW, JFK, LAX, LGA, MIA, PHX, SAN, and SFO. While I do strive to walk the floor whenever we arrive in staffed cities, unfortunately sometimes it’s just possible. My personal goal is to add more stations in the coming year, and to get to the floor more often as well. Among other Local duties, a great deal of my travel was for quarterly Membership Meetings in the five Regions, providing direct in-person reports to you, the Members, on Local topics. As a reminder, if you cannot attend a Membership Meeting in person, you can always attend via Zoom Webinar. The registration notifications are sent out prior to each scheduled meeting, and also posted on your Region page on Local591.com. Just register ahead of the start time of the meeting you want to attend virtually, and you will receive an access code.
I, along with many TWU Representatives and Members from around the country, spent a week in July in Washington D.C. as part of a TWU-wide in-person lobbying Congress effort. Prior to meeting with elected officials and their staff, we were all provided guidance and training from the TWU International and a political lobbying firm on what to expect, how to communicate with members of Congress and their aides, and the primary talking points for this lobbying effort. Contrary to popular belief, Local 591 does not just focus on Democrats or ‘dump money’ on politicians (which we really can’t do), we spend a great deal of time speaking with and working with all of our friends in Congress, regardless of party affiliation. The political talking points, regardless of what TWU Division you were in, included one issue for Rail, one issue for Transit and one issue for the Air Division. For the Air Division, that targeted focus was on passing the FAA Reauthorization Bill (which includes our Local 591 H.R. 1716 Global Aircraft Maintenance Safety Improvement Act language). This Bill is sponsored by NY Congressman (R) Marc Molinaro, and has solid bipartisan cosponsor support in the House, and had a strong bipartisan vote in the House in 2023 passing the Bill. On a side note, Representatives Malliotakis (R), Molinaro (R), LaLota (R), and D’Esposito (R) held a press conference with the TWU International and Local 567 and 591 Presidents highlighting the importance of this pro-worker and pro-national security legislation, and also frankly calling out the U.S. Senate for not taking up and voting in this important pro-America Worker legislation.
Throughout the year, I have provided support and assistance to those who asked within TWU Local 591 on quite a number of challenges, issues, and discussions. These included in-depth discussions with a multitude of managers and executives system-wide within the company on a dizzying number of topics. Much of that Member and Rep support I provide is behind the scenes, and rarely seen by the Members, or even by the Local 591 Representatives. A lot of that support is in the form of critical reading, researching issues and histories, building draft documents, creating complex spreadsheets, pursuing Local 591 interests with the TWU International, inputting/verifying data to be used in grievance/arbitration as well as in discussions with company managers, legal and/or labor relations, etc. Some of the more focused topics included working to either better understand a system or process, or working to solve the problems with and/or improve Workbrain, the recently implemented eBidding system, eVacation bidding, benefits administration, Widebody Wi-Fi antenna stand acquisition and improvement, Electronic Aircraft Maintenance Logbook (eAML) rollout, improving Smoke Odor Fume (SOF) maintenance processes, resolving Scope issues pertaining to a number of Classifications, and that list just goes on. All of these efforts, and the much larger list of the ones I have not listed, are focused on making the lives at work better and safer for you, our Members. I know that we are not always 100% successful, but we do continue to work to solve problems and improve processes for our Members every chance we get.
A milestone for the Local, and something that consumed a great deal of my time, was the purchase of our new office building. As we have grown as a Local, we as an Executive Board recognized that our current building was no longer able to handle the business needs of the Local. Because of this, we as an Executive Board, unanimously agreed to purchase a building better suited to the needs of the Local, which is in the DFW area and also both nearer to AA Headquarters as well as nearer to the Hangars on the airfield. This new building has been modified to provide a large and modern training room, larger podcast room, more offices, and also both a smaller and a larger meeting area outside of the training room. As you can imagine, this endeavor was another significant cause for me to travel to DFW often, as time permitted, to assist in preparing the building. Preparing the building included everything from arranging to have a lighted flagpole installed, finding meeting room furniture, expanding the training room area, indoor and outdoor lighting, signage, painting, flooring, plumbing, electrical, networking improvements, moving some equipment from the old building, among the million and one other big and little projects that needed to be accomplished. While the building isn’t quite ready for a ‘grand opening’ yet, we continue to work to accomplish all of the items on the list to make this fully our new Local 591 home. If you’re in DFW, and want to stop by, the office is usually staffed weekdays, and is located at 1905 Stone Myers Parkway in Grapevine Texas. Once fully ready for business, I believe you will find the new office and training center quite impressive, and something we can all be proud to call our Local 591 Home.
In the area of Local 591 communications, the Local has produced quite a few Local 591 Podcasts (though we definitely want to produce more moving forward), along with a few Local 591 YouTube videos, and volumes of email and texts. On the topic of communications, Local 591 has a fairly comprehensive website, a Phone App, though we predominantly use email and text messages to quickly relay information to the Membership. On the topic of text messaging, the Local previously moved from ‘standard’ SMS text messages which have many limitations, to Short Code SMS which is more versatile but still limited to 160 characters per text message. During that transition we experienced some technical issues, which caused multiple sends and/or web-link errors, which we worked through, and we apologize for the frustration that transition may have caused you. The Local is now working to improve the texting process to a more dynamic and versatile MMS text based system, which expands the character limit, which should eliminate the previous issues and limitations we experienced.. In order for the Local to communicate with you, we need you to provide us with current contact information. If you have not registered, please do so here, so that we can start providing you more information in a timely manner. If you have previously registered, and need to update any of your contact or work related information, please click here. This is also where you would provide useful information like your shirt size for when the Local chooses to buy Union apparel and your Veteran status. It appears approximately 10% of eligible dues paying Members of Local 591 have not even registered. Of the approximately fifty-two-hundred Local 591 active TWU Members who have registered approximately 7% haven’t provided an email address, 11% haven’t provided a Home Phone # (Land Line), 27% haven’t provided a Cell Phone # (Accepts Texts), 3% haven’t provided a shirt size, 36% haven’t indicated whether they are a Veteran or not, and 22% have chosen to not receive text messages from the Local.
Lastly, in addition to those many significant activities this year, TWU Local 591 has continued to focus on the future, and in this case, that means focusing on the next round of contract negotiations. I have heard from our Members, almost from day one of the current JCBA, that you expect this Local to be both fully prepared and directly involved in the upcoming contract negotiations. Our current M&R, MLS, MTS, and MCT JCBAs all become amendable in March of 2025. We at Local 591 are not planning to wait until then to get the ball rolling on the next round of negotiations. Along with Local 591 President Schaible, MLS Executive Board Member Mike Bush, and myself as your Administrative Executive Board Member, we are your representatives on the seven member TWU side of the Negotiations Committee for M&R, MLS, MTS, and the MCT Collective Bargaining Agreements. We as a Local are already pressing forward. I have been keeping a running list over the past three-plus years of suggestions previously mentioned either in meetings, in-person, via email, text, etc. More recently suggestions are being sent to us via the Local 591 Contract Survey pages. Thank you to all the Members who have already submitted suggestions. Please keep sending us what you like, don’t like, what you want, and don’t want, in your next Collective Bargaining Agreement. It is important to use those survey pages, mostly because it makes it much more efficient for us to sort and prioritize your suggestions. While those Local 591 contract suggestion pages ‘officially’ closed on January 2nd 2024, that doesn’t mean that I or we at Local 591 will stop listening to you as new ideas come up. We simply needed a cutoff point to provide us with time to organize all of your submitted suggestions so that we can formulate your ideas into a comprehensive plan moving forward, and to ensure that your voice is both heard, and that those ideas are acted upon.
In closing, I want to thank each of you for your continued support, and your willingness to stay involved and engaged. While I know it can often be viewed as a groaner or cliché, but the truth is that we are all the Union. That said, the reality is that without active and involved Members, this Union, or any Union for that matter, cannot hope to succeed in representing the best interests of the Membership in the face of our employer.
Fraternally
Russ Dittmer
Local 591 Administrative E-Board Member
russ.dittmer@local591.com
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