Sisters and Brothers:
We recently met with ExpressJet Vice President of Inflight Brandee Reynolds and CRJ Director of Inflight Dan Curtin. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss DTW being closed sooner (Dec 1) than anticipated when the Delta take down was originally discussed and what changes have occurred that lead to this decision.
The Company stated that no changes had been made regarding which planes would be coming out of service and when but just changes in the routing and creating more deadheads out of the ATL base to allow it to remain open longer while DTW would be closing Dec 1.
We expressed our great displeasure with being notified only minutes before the announcement was made, but unfortunately the dates were still being discussed and the final decision was made the same day the announcement was made and we were notified as soon as possible.
We discussed the DTW displacement bid and which bases would be open for displacements. The Company indicated ATL would definitely be open but would know more regarding the displacement bid and staffing in the coming days.
We discussed the CRJ attrition and the fact that there were so many on the attrition list for September. The Company has been granting 15 retirements with the additional two months pay/medical benefits per month and there are approximately 12 still waiting to be granted. While the CRJ side is slightly overstaffed at this time, due to the large increase they’ve seen in attrition they are not anticipating any overstaffing issues in the next few months.
The meeting then turned to focus on ERJ overstaffing. The Company indicated that we would be overstaffed in the amount of 218 ERJ flight attendants by January of 2018, which they indicated has the possibility to lead to short-term furloughs if they don’t have an alternative. However, the 218 number the Company stated does not account for any attrition. We discussed in detail possibilities for COLAs, job shares, partnerships and personal trip/reserve drops. The Company was open minded to any suggestions but noted while those leaves, drops and part-time programs help get the wages off the books, continuing to cover insurance rates was a major budgetary concern. COLAs do continue medical for 90 days. It was our recommendation that the Company offer COLAs in various lengths, awarding as many job shares as possible and open up reserves to dropping reserve days as well as trips.
We discussed time frames regarding scaling up from the 101 aircrafts to the 126 number discussed both in the UAL 5 year deal announcement. The Company indicated that there was no solid timeline yet and noted the difficulty in staffing projections without this information as well.
Moving forward, we will be receiving very basic attrition information from the Company on a weekly basis and we have set up ongoing meetings every other week to remain abreast of any new information and to be able to best service the membership.
In solidarity,
Sara Gonzales Marche’ Johnson-Cooper
GENERAL CHAIR SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE
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