Workers at a Gary, Indiana air traffic control tower voted in PATCO, Inc. According to a statement the union released on its site, the incumbent union received absolutely no votes. The NLRB election took place on Friday and the official certification is set to take place within the next seven days … that’s the new news; and now the discussion:

For the last few months Union Review has reported and held commentary regarding PATCO, Inc., the independent union comprised of 1980s strikers organizing today in the private sector. Discussing PATCO is a touchy situation around here, evidently, because there are a lot of people who think they are a “raiding union,” and clearly people are welcomed to their opinions.

My personal stand on PATCO, Inc is this: If they can organize workers and provide a better representation than their incumbent union – for whatever the reason, than in the long run it will help the workers in those towers, and to me that’s a good thing.

The PATCO history is many years old. It includes being the union that stood up and got its collective back broken by Ronald Reagan. It is the union that was once folded into another version of PATCO under AFSCME (which is still in operation under a similar name, and organizes dental workers as well as ATCs, among others, I believe). The PATCO, Inc., folks either broke away from the AFSCME fold or were asked to leave; either way, they did that and went under and OPEIU fold, and were then told to be a “rocking chair union” by the AFL-CIO because of the suspicion of raiding (information that was told to me by PATCO, INC); they leave the AFL-CIO and go totally independent under the presidency of Mr. Ron Taylor (who is a member of Union Review and posts here frequently).

As people came here angry at me (one person even threatened me, which I thought was fun), angry at the union, angry at everything under the sun – in a very naïve move I even suggested the top officers of the divided union meet to negotiate and come together. I was all but laughed at, or so it seemed, so I let it go and let the great divide continue as business as usual.

In the interim I would get emails from both sides telling me that the other was lying. I was asked to remove people’s comments from the site and that I was not being responsible in handling this site because I allowed for false information. I was asked to provide personal information as to who posted what, etc. I did none of that and just let the facts get presented, that is … when there were facts available to present.

In a completely different situation in South Florida, a group of jail guards ousted their Fraternal order Of Police union and chose to go with the Teamsters – and interestingly, no one called the Teamsters a raiding union. In fact, someone wrote to me saying, good for these workers … we hope that they have better representation going forward now, and I agreed with that situation as I agree with this one.

It is important for me to write out that just because I have an opinion on a situation taking place in the union movement does not mean it is right or wrong. I am certainly no authority on any one given union … and most people who come to this site have a lot more experience organizing on the ground than I do. That said, everyone at the site is given an opportunity to speak their speak, debate what they want; and I have only ever drawn the line at posting personal threats to me and other users of the site (I have done that twice so far in two years).

So, if you think PATCO, Inc. are raiding bastards, that’s all good …however, I have to say that when a group of workers identifies that their current union is not doing jack for them and they come together to vote in another union; more power to them.