Brothers and sisters

I'm requesting that everyone send the attached letter to President Little. You can cut and paste to E-mail or as an edited attachment is fine, you just need to add your name, dept, and station. There has been some concern that the members may not be ready to engage in self help in order to move the process forward to a fair contract. Please feel free to forward this to any member under the MR and Stores agreements and ask them to include which department and Station they are from under their name.

In November of 2007 we presented the company with Section 6 openers per the RLA, we did not exercise our right to do so a year earlier. We entered into this process in good faith yet despite our sacrifices the company has steadfastly refused to come back to the Union with a reasonable proposal that we can accept. After two years of fruitless negotiations we asked for Federal Mediation, a year later we asked to be released from Mediation, we were told to continue negotiations by the NMB. In the Summer of 2010 we rejected the company's take it or leave it offer. It has now nearly been one year since that offer was rejected and still no meaningful progress has been made on the economic proposals, in fact the company's latest proposals are regressive. The additional Holidays were more than paid for by the change from May 5 2010 to DOS. The company's continued refusal to recognize that we are negotiating an agreement with an effective date beginning May 1, 2008 is insulting and unacceptable. In light of this I'm requesting that the TWU petition the NMB to release us from Mediation and start the clock to self help with the full awareness of the potential risks and benefits this step presents.