April 26, 2019
File: BA-18
IAM / BRITISH AIRWAYS NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE
Negotiations continued this week in Chicago, Illinois under the auspices of the NMB and Mediator Gerry McGuckin. The Company committee led by Brian Pinchbeck from customer service and Wayne Frasier from engineering, also included Fiona O’Shea, Lorna Elliott and Kate Ling from the UK and Georgia LaBarge from the US. The full negotiation committee for the Union was present.
The first day started with an inventory of engineering tentative agreements to date and was followed by discussions concerning CTO. The CTO discussion was a continuation from last session in which some key areas were identified via an interest based bargaining exercise. From that exercise, four areas were identified that will become the basis for the future exchange of language change proposals. The engineering talks concluded with the Union receiving another economic proposal from the company that again fell well short of any of the realities facing BA all across the US. Your pay is well behind all of your peers. Those coming in to the industry are not gravitating towards any lower paying jobs and current BA engineers and there experience are leaving every month. Hopefully management in engineering will again regroup with all of these things in mind.
After a presentation from Mr. Pinchbeck, which, on a positive note, acknowledged the Unions buyout proposal from late last year and the value that could be derived from it, we talked extensively about elements of a severance program. Next week, a certain number of employees will be receiving a communication via company email on the subject of voluntary severance. If you receive this email, I strongly urge you to participate by providing your feedback as you would be considered eligible for a voluntary severance program. The feedback you provide will be sent to both the company via the email in the communication and you will also have the ability to copy me in by sending it to . This is the opportunity for those who are eligible to tell the company what interests you and what aspects are important when it comes to a voluntary severance package, if at all. Again, your participation although voluntary, will be beneficial so please keep an eye out for it so you can participate.
Future dates are still set and include the weeks of May 20 (NYC), June 3 (DC), June 17 (ORD) and July 15 (NYC). The location of any mediated negotiations is solely at the Mediators discretion. If you have any questions, please give me a call at (859) 653-4037 or email me at or contact one of your negotiating committee members.
With best wishes, I remain
Sincerely and fraternally,
James M. Samuel
GENERAL CHAIR
Reggie Gauthier John Reisert
Committee Member Committee Member
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