Negotiations-
We have repeatedly addressed the slow pace we have experienced in negotiations since the Company filed for mediation over a year ago. We are still aggressively pursuing the scheduling of new negotiations dates. We are hopeful that we will be communicating new negotiations dates very soon.
Monthly Meeting with XJT COO Terry Vais
On Friday, November 20th GC Sara Gonzales, SR Marche Johnson Cooper and SR Melissa Brennan met with COO Terry Vais. They followed up regarding the issues addressed at the last meeting and addressed new issues such as the CRJ Vacation Bid problems and ERJ 1/7 violations which haven’t been resolved. Since addressing UAX announcement CDs, the Company plans to start that project in the first quarter of 2016. In addition, Terry committed to further researching catering truck service in ORD as we explained not only the added burden on the members, but also the safety and sanitary concerns with the current “bag drop” method. We are pleased with the open communication with the Company and look forward to continuing monthly meetings with Mr. Vais.
DFW Station Visits
This past week GC Sara Gonzales, SR Marche Johnson Cooper, SR Melissa Brennan along with 2339H President Nancie Craft were all in DFW for station visits. They were able to discuss the importance of Local Lodge meeting attendance, issues regarding ERJ ARC assignments and CRJ vacation bidding. As always, it was very beneficial to hear the membership’s concerns first hand and in person and we look forward to having more station visits throughout the rest of 2016.
CRJ
submitted by Special Representative, Marche Johnson Cooper
CRJ Vacation Bid Awards for 2016
ATL Grievance Representative Marvin Moon and CRJ Special Representative Marche’ Johnson-Cooper met with the Company on Friday, November 20, 2015 to address the contractual violation that occurred with the 2016 vacation bidding process as well as the vacation awards.
- The Company allowed Flight Attendants to bid for vacation when contractually they weren’t eligible. This is a violation of Section 11.D Transfer to Non flying or Supervisory Duties
- A flight Attendant who has transferred to a position covered by subsection D shall not be permitted to bid for a line of flying or vacation. The Flight Attendant shall be permitted to bid for the month in which she/he is going to be returning to the line. The Unions made it clear this violation tainted the award process. To make all Flight Attendants whole, we insisted that all non-eligible Flight Attendants be removed from the vacation bid process and only eligible Flight Attendants have the ability to rebid for our 2016 vacation weeks. The Company contends the contract was not violated however they did offer to remove some non-eligible FA’s from the bid award and rerun the awards from the bids that had been submitted. We do not find this to be an acceptable solution. Our goal is to ensure a fair vacation award for each and everyone one of you.
- There was also much confusion when we received our preliminary vacation results. The preliminary award didn’t correspond to each weekly preference that we had bid. We reviewed how the bids were awarded to ensure they were awarded by your weekly preference. The Company computer system shows your awards in the order you had bid, it unfortunately wasn’t published to our Flight Attendants in this format. The Union has requested the document be sent out in seniority order and the weeks be listed in order of preference bid.
- Several of our Flight Attendants were awarded linked weeks. According to the Company’s system, the final bids submitted did in fact reflect linked weeks. How it changed from your final bid confirmation to what’s reflected in the Company’s is being investigated further.
CORRECTION: The CRJ DECEMBER 2015 BID AWARD RESULTS bulletin sent out had a secondary unstack at Flight Attendant 517. We apologize for any confusion.
Grievance
This week one grievance was filed in ATL. Grievance Mediation is scheduled for February 2016.
ERJ
submitted by General Chairperson, Sara Gonzales
Grievance Mediation
Grievance mediation was held November 12th & 13th in San Antonio (due to the Mediator’s location). We addressed several outstanding grievances and were already able to successfully resolve two of those grievances, one of which was an individual issue along with the Commuter Clause issue, which was a major system-wide problem.
There are several other grievances that we had good discussion on, which the Company is reviewing and should be responding to shortly. Overall, we made substantial progress and grievance mediation will be one more tool we can to achieve favorable grievance outcomes for the membership.
We have confirmed our next mediation dates will be February 9-11 in conjunction with CRJ mediation in Atlanta.
Step 2 Grievances
We heard all of the outstanding grievances at Step 2 hearings in ATL on November 19th. We were able to resolve several of them but we are waiting on responses for several as well. Most of the grievances heard were on individual issues.
This past week we received three additional grievances were received for appeal to Step 2. The base breakdown for the current pending Step 2 grievances is as follows:
EWR-2
CLE-1
We are in the process of scheduling our next Step 2 hearings and as soon as we confirm a date, we will pass that information along.
Grievance Committee Update
Monday, Nov 23rd an ERJ Grievance Committee conference call was held. We reviewed progress that was made at Grievance Mediation and topics that were discussed at the meeting with the COO. In addition, each base did updates regarding current issues taking place in their base. One of the positive notes was that we have seen an overall decrease in disciplinary meetings regarding customer complaints. Also mentioned were EWR representatives who were able to resolve some cancelation pay protection issues. Scheduling inconsistencies particularly with ARC assignments was another issue that was noted and may have a grievance filed on it as well.
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