Source: ourunited.org

The Joint Negotiations Committee (JNC) has concluded another round of negotiations in Houston. 

As you know AFA and United management have been using a process of Facilitated Problem Solving with the assistance of the National Mediation Board (NMB) since last July.  The process has helped both parties reach tentative agreements on a number of subjects and Contract sections.  This process was altered at the beginning of the year in order to increase the work being done.  The parties did so by increasing the number of subcommittees working at any given time, and by talking about entire Contract sections instead of discrete subjects.  Another important change was choosing existing Contract language to “adopt and amend” for use in a new combined Contract. 

We told you in our last update that all parties had participated in a status conference with the NMB at the end of March.  As a result of that conference the NMB strongly encouraged both AFA and the Company to refine the process to reduce the number of subcommittees, and limit the number of participants involved on subcommittees to “decision makers.”  This has proved to be timely given that most of the sections the subcommittees had been working on are now complete, so most of the AFA volunteers who had been working with us have left the process. This month negotiations consisted of four subcommittees which addressed, among other things, Benefits, Sick Leave, the General section, TDY, Reduction of Personnel, Incentives and Hours of Service.  We also continued to work at “adopting and amending” whole Contract sections that didn’t necessarily need to be put into a subcommittee.

The JNC understands it might be confusing to hear that “the process” has been altered yet again, however we’d like to point out that a lot of work has been accomplished since July 2014.  We have a healthy list of tentatively agreed to sections and subjects. The sections and subjects that remain to be worked on are bigger, more complicated and more inter-related than those that have been resolved so far. The core sections that deal with Scheduling, Benefits, Scope, Compensation and Duration are some of the most important parts of our Contract, so it makes sense at this point to reduce the number of subcommittees and broaden their work as we begin compiling all these separate sections and subjects into a complete Contract.

During this month’s session the subcommittees have been working on the following sections and subjects:

Bidding Timeline

The General Section which includes:

The JNC also worked on language to adopt and amend the following sections:

As of today we have tentative agreements on the following sections and subjects: 

The JNC would like to take this opportunity to thank all the Flight Attendants volunteers who have spent the last 10 months with us.  Their knowledge as subject matter experts made a huge difference in our work output and in what we have been able to achieve so far. 

The work we have being doing since last July has had all of us focused on finding resolutions that address the needs of three different subsidiaries.  It has required a lot of patience, persistence, hard work and compromise.  Moving beyond that to find resolutions with the Company has required even more.

The JNC will resume negotiations on May 11^th in Houston.

In Solidarity,