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Greetings,
Dear Co-worker, Your AFA leadership, Stephen Couckuyt/ANC LECP, Rene
Celestin/LAX LECP, Cathy Gwynn/PDX LECP, Rick Johnson/SEA LECP,
Deanna Hill/MECVP, Renee Elson/MEC Sec-Treasurer, and I met
Monday in several venues with the MEC and with management. Monday was our regularly
scheduled quarterly Labor Leadership meeting with management;
the topics suffice it to say, by consensus, focused on the
recently announced capacity reduction and the Q2 earnings
report. Bottom line
is at this moment they do not have figures, either in
percentages or head counts, for what the winter schedule will
look like as far as being over-staffing. This is not reflective
so much of poor or lack of planning as it is of how early they
decided to share the capacity reduction and its potential
consequences with the employees. They have tasked the planning folks (NOT crew
planning, i.e. Kelly and Sandy) with building a winter schedule
with a reduction in capacity, a.k.a. total flight hours. There will be some
familiar reductions, Saturday nights, early morning Sundays,
possibly flights on the holiday’s themselves (remember
when we never flew on Christmas Day!) as well as some of the
night flying. Some
will impact frequency, and some may involve destinations, both
eliminating and adding.
They are shooting for a percentage, but not at the cost
of profitable flying.
Neither the precise number or hours nor the subsequent
head count that correlates with it will be known until roughly
August 31st and the publishing of the winter
schedule. AFA
leadership also met with Ann Ardizzone to begin reviewing
opportunities to avoid involuntary furloughs. The Flight Attendant
group has several contractual tools, two of them new with the
2006 agreement, to help off set involuntary furloughs. Personal LOAs, referred
to in application as staffing adjustment leaves are the most
familiar to us. They have received over 100 bids for the 30 and
60 day staffing adjustment LOA in September. Over half of those are
for the 60 day and will put us ahead of the game for
October. The
deadline for those LOA applications is August
5th.
Additionally, we now have contract language requiring the
proffer of extended LOAs as well as Voluntary Furloughs before
they can involuntarily furlough. We can go into much greater detail on the different
programs when we have the numbers from planning. You can review
the language in Sections 15 and 18 for a general spin. Without potential
durations it would be difficult to conclusively evaluate each of
the options and how they might work for each of us, and those
will be dependant somewhat upon what the winter schedule
actually looks like.
It seems, in our first review, that it would be
beneficial to have all of the programs posted in one bid, i.e.
allow us to bid on only one of the LOA formats/durations or to
bid on several, listing any preferences. Further review could
show there to be flaws in that approach, but that question will
very likely come up and we wanted to address it. We’ll do our best
to keep you informed as we continue our discussions and as we
get firm numbers. Take care and fly safe. Kelle Wells MEC President |
