Friday, April 8, 2011

Is Indy Airport Playing Politics For Ballard?

I've said it before and I'll say it again - nothing happens at the Indianapolis International Airport that is not pre-approved by the Mayor.

I suspect his fingerprints are on the latest news from the Airport. At least his campaign's fingerprints are under suspicion.

In today's Indy Star there is a notice of a public hearing on an Airport ordinance that would rescind an older ordinance allowing collective bargaining by Airport employees. In part the notice says:

General Ordinance No. 1-2011, if adopted, shall repeal General Ordinance No. 9-2008 which established a system to permit representation of certain employees by unions (employee organizations) for purposes of limited collective bargaining for employees of the Indianapolis Airport Authority.

The meeting of the Airport Authority Board will be at 8 am, April 15, in the main conference room of the Radisson Hotel, 2500 South High School Road - not in the Board room at the airport.

The Airport Board was going to vote on this proposal to nip union hopes in the bud (aka 'union busting') back at its March 11 meeting (see my blog entry "Union Busting Reaches Fever Pitch in Indiana"). Then, all of a sudden, the proposed vote was taken off the table "indefinitely" (see my blog entry on March 9 "Indy Airport Sidesteps Union Issue - For Now") "Indefinitely" sure had a short tenure.

At the same time as the vote was 'indefinitely postponed', Mayor Greg Ballard's campaign was making much hay of its endorsement by 4 AFSCME locals representing City workers. In fact, the campaign made the announcement on March 8 and the Airport's 'indefinite' postponement hit the newspaper on March 9. Coordinated ? Quack, quack, quack.

Now that the campaign no longer needs undivided attention to its supposed support for and by Union brothers and sisters, the Airport is released to return to its union bashing ways.

Perhaps the 4 AFSCME locals would contemplate rescinding their endorsements on principal.

3 comments:

Blog Admin said...

IF I remember correctly, the President of at least one of the AFSCME is a buddy of Daniels and Ballard and has donated to both campaigns.

Nicolas Martin said...

Why do governments need to own commercial airports? All such enterprises lend themselves to corruption.

Paul K. Ogden said...

NM,

Governments, i.e. the public, should own airports, just like governments should own the roads. Do you want air travel at the mercy of a private company? One thing that is clear is that privatization does not work when you give a company a monopoloy. Travelers won't be protected. It's not like you can have a bunch of airports in the metro area and pick the one that offers the best rates.