Greetings,

Dear Alaska co-workers,

In light of the second quarter earnings announcement and the associated communications from our management, we, your AFA leadership, wanted to get out a quick note.  We spent close to an hour early this morning on a conference call with Ann Ardizzone, VP Inflight Services.  While the implications of the mid-summer staffing adjustment leaves were not lost on any of us, those leaves, as well as those that followed for the fall, were expected to be the only tools necessary to ride out our over-staffing situation before we were back on track for December.

Today we learned there are plans for a system-wide capacity reduction that will impact December and the future. This morning there were no firm numbers given but in general the figures do not seem to be much different from those we were looking at for the fall.  It is, to be clear, that these overages are now projected to be longer in duration that brings us full force into addressing how best we can minimize their affect.  To that end we, along with other labor leaders, will be meeting with Alaska management on Monday, and independently throughout the week to exchange staffing ideas and applications.  We will follow up on some of the ideas discussed this morning, the possibility of another Early-Out Program, as well the Voluntary Furlough Program we used in 1993 and 2001.  Also as a reminder, the old jobshare program we will most assuredly see for September will be replaced with the more seniority driven “low-bid option” you can find information on in the current contract.  On a bit of a tangent, it was raised that there is some confusion regarding leaves and the 480 threshold applications in the contract.  A reminder that each day of a staffing adjustment leave will reduce your required TFP credit by 1.333 TFP.

We will keep you updated as we get more concrete information.

Take care and fly safe.

Kelle Wells, MEC President, and your AFA leadership.