As Labor Unions Gain Public Esteem, The Second Largest Airline Union Purges Its Political Dissidents

The second biggest airline union has continued to oust dissident leaders in an internal political battle, undermining hopes that the U.S. labor movement might emerge as an irreproachable voice for working people.

Instead, the International Association of Machinists is rapidly accumulating a series of dismissals of top officers followed by lawsuits.  

The seminal event was the 2021 removal of Sito Pantoja, general vice president of the union’s transportation division, who drew the ire of Robert Martinez, international president, by opposing a candidate backed by Martinez for international secretary treasurer.

Last month, the International Association of Machinists ousted the top two elected local leaders of District Lodge 142, both Pantoja backers, and replaced them with a trustee whom Martinez appointed.

District 142 represents about 20,000 airline workers including Southwest Airlines agents, Hawaiian Airlines mechanics, Alaska Airlines agents and fleet workers as well as American Airlines mechanics, who are jointly represented with the Transport Workers Union.

In a Jan. 26 letter to District 142 members, Martinez said he instituted a trusteeship because of various unspecified improper payments for officers, retirees and telephone equipment; creation of an unauthorized and undisclosed $720,000 account; various failures to disclose and document spending and possible tax filing miscues. Also, the letter said, the officers used a rubber stamp for signatures, violating the union’s fiduciary controls.

The trusteeship meant the removal of the district lodge’s top two elected officers, President Dave Supplee and Secretary Treasurer Ian Scott-Anderman, who lost to Cervantes in the election for IAM secretary-treasurer.

On Tuesday, about 20 members attended a hearing on the trusteeship at a hotel in Kansas City.

At the hearing, Joe Tiberi, a twice-ousted official, disputed the causes for the trusteeship, including the “missing” $270,000, which he said was neither undisclosed nor unauthorized. He said the money, reimbursed to the union by American Airlines for expenses related to collective bargaining, sits in a Bank of America branch in Kansas City, headquarters of Lodge 142. The account’s existence has been repeatedly reported in documents routinely sent to lodge members.

Tiberi, who had been Pantoja’s chief of staff, was ousted when Pantoja was ousted. Then he accepted a job as special representative to District 142. But the creation of the trusteeship resulted in the loss of that job. At the hearing, Tiberi said the trusteeship “stops people from voting for their own representatives,” adding, “Nothing presented would justify such a drastic action, even if it were true.”

In a prepared statement, the union said, “Top District 142 officers secretly created an unauthorized six-figure account, stockpiled hundreds of undisclosed phones, tablets and hotspots, and transferred cash into a personal account without proper documentation. Moving $270,000 to a secret account is not a clerical error, it is a breach of fiduciary duties to the members.

“This type of fiscal mismanagement has been heard before in other trusteeships and found to be a valid reason for a trusteeship. This action was undertaken in a manner consistent with the IAM constitution to protect member dues,” the union said. 

Martinez was elected union president in 2016. IAM has 325,000 active members including 60,000 in two lodges that represent airline workers and 27,000 members at Boeing. TWU, the biggest airline union, has 65,000 active airline employees.

Pantoja had been among the airline industry’s top leaders for a decade, but in 2020 union elections, he opposed Martinez’s choice, Dora Cervantes, for secretary treasurer. During the election, Cervantes denied charges that she had tried to cover up her sister’s theft of union funds from a local that is part of District 142.

In June 2021, the IAM removed Pantoja from his job, demoting him to an amorphous role. In August, Pantoja filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleging that he (and Tiberi) were demoted because he supported a candidate. In his suit, Pantoja alleged he was assigned to “make-work” apprenticeship research projects. The union intended “to remove dissenters from the leadership,” discourage oversight of members’ dues money and assets and “to chill the exercise of free speech rights by IAM members,” the suit said.

Last month, Supplee and Scott-Anderman filed suit to contest the creation of the trusteeship, their removal their leadership roles and the appointment of new leaders.

They alleged the trusteeship is illegal for at least three reasons: No hearing took place, it was imposed to remove incumbent officials, and it unlawfully suspended those officials.

The trusteeship was imposed as political reprisal against Supplee and Scott-Anderman “for challenging defendant Dora Cervantes in the election that was concluded in May 2021 (and) for criticizing Cervantes’ apparent misappropriation of union funds,” the lawsuit says.

“The reasons given by the defendants in the trusteeship notice are pretextual,” the lawsuit says. “For instance, its claim of a secret account of $270,000.00 is demonstrably false. Certain other practices cited by the IAM auditors are relatively minor matters and none demonstrate a shortage or loss of funds or any other conduct that justifies a trusteeship.