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Negotiations Update

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Source: AFA

Date: Oct 12, 2015

Source: ourcontract.org

The JNC has spent the last two months together in Chicago preparing for our upcoming mediation session next week on October 20th in Washington, DC.  Our work has been focused on reviewing all the tentative agreements and open issues from the Facilitated Problem Solving process that ended in July.  Through our review and our work over the last two months we have developed a strong, clear and unified proposal that we all stand behind and represents the interests of the 24,000 Flight Attendants at United Airlines.

The JNC has been focused on two general areas. The first is Scheduling, which includes Hours of Service, RIGs, International and other related sections of the Contract.  We are writing full text proposals that address Bidding, Reserve, Trading, Legal Rest, Reassignments and other aspects of our Schedules.  These provisions directly affect our work lives. These protections represent the heart of our Contracts and are immensely important. We are putting the finishing touches on a comprehensive Scheduling proposal for our first mediation session. We believe our proposal is built around Flight Attendant interests, and it stands in stark contrast to United’s Labor Relations negotiators position that, at a time of record profits, we should cut $25 million out of the Scheduling sections, gutting contract provisions we have fought for years to build and retain. 

The other area we have been working on is, simply put, the rest of the Contract. We have gone through every other section that remains open and put together unified positions on them as we push towards a final agreement. All the other sections of our Contracts, besides Scheduling, are important and nothing should be overlooked or lost. Examples of a few of these sections are Transportation & Hotels, Personnel Files, Commuter, Benefits and Retirement

We are hopeful the appointment of Oscar Munoz as CEO will bring a new approach to the relationship between United Airlines and Flight Attendants. We are looking to Oscar to implement an approach that brings our airline together and stops the Labor Relations positions and Inflight policies that further divide Flight Attendants and seek to dismantle our Contracts. The joint Master Executive Councils passed a resolution two weeks ago calling for, among other things, prompt and immediate progress at the bargaining table. All of us on the JNC want to see that.

We are going into our first mediation session next week with optimism, yet we should all be cautious. Even though we have a new CEO, trust must be earned, and the fact of the matter is the Labor Relations and Inflight Services management teams remain unchanged at this point. The JNC will be watching closely to see if United has changed its approach to this long drawn out negotiations. We are hopeful and would welcome positive change at our airline and at the bargaining table; we know you would as well.

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