Greetings,

At this year's AFA-CWA Board of Directors, your Local President will be voting on several scenarios for a dues increase for AFA. We would like to provide you with some background for the dues increase issues along with the attachment to this E-News.

After 9/11, AFA lost many members and, in addition to carriers that went bankrupt putting AFA and the rest of the Airline Industry in financial crisis. At that time AFA was forced to look at our options in order to survive. Several other Unions were analyzed for partnership with AFA. After looking at them all, AFA decided to go with CWA. In this agreement we were able to keep our autonomy, also, an opt-out of the agreement after four years, and our dues would stay at $39.00 for the four years (CWA's average dues is $43.00). We asked for a year extension to the agreement and received it from CWA.

The time has now expired and AFA must make a decision to remain with CWA or opt-out and return to our original status pre 9/11.

On the first chart you will see in the attachment (you will need Adobe Reader to open it. It can be downloaded free at www.adobe.com ) a chart that shows AFA's dues increases from 1976 to the present. You will notice that AFA dues have not been increased since 1994 while the cost of doing business has increased every year since then.

Following the chart are the four options that are available to us for your Local President to vote on. Each has background information and scenarios of our financial stability for each option.

Please review these and give your feedback to your Local President. Your Local President has the actual budget numbers refered to in the attachment.

In Unity,

Your AFA-CWA American Eagle MEC