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AFA to File for Mediation and Update on Meeting with the Company

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Source: AFA

Date: Aug 19, 2015

Source: OurContract.org

Tomorrow, AFA will file a request with the National Mediation Board for mediation in our negotiations with United Airlines for a Joint Collective Bargaining Agreement. United Airlines has chosen not to join in our request for mediation; however, their lack of joint filing has no legal or practical effect.   Once we enter mediation, the timing and location of negotiations are determined by the National Mediation Board.  We hope to hear from the NMB soon as to the scheduling of dates with the Company for mediation. 

On August 17, MEC Presidents Marcus Valentino, Ken Diaz, and Suzanne Hendricks along with Joe Burns AFA Director of Collective Bargaining met with Company officials to negotiate a revised protocol agreement.  During these meetings, the Company proposed that we enter into an agreement to utilize an arbitration process similar to what was forced upon AA Flight Attendants coming out of the American bankruptcy process. Under the Company’s scenario, the parties would briefly negotiate before exchanging in ‘take it or leave it’ comprehensive proposals. 

Under the Company’s proposed process, the arbitrators would pick between the Company’s or Union’s comprehensive proposal in its entirety. The arbitration award would be subject to both membership ratification and approval by the Company. For reasons specified below, this approach was rejected by your leadership as extremely detrimental to Flight Attendant interests.   

In contrast to prior Company pronouncements of wanting an industry-leading agreement, under the Company’s proposed process the economic standard would be the average of American and Delta.   Such a standard would put our profit sharing at risk and would possibly allow the Company to put even less money into the agreement than they are currently offering after years of delay. So it is no surprise that the Company wanted this process and it also should be no surprise it was quickly rejected by the Union.  

Our legal advisers have uniformly indicated such a process would advantage the Company and almost certainly result in a sub-standard agreement for Flight Attendants, jeopardizing our job security, profit sharing and other important contract language. Although under the Company’s proposal the arbitrator’s award would be non-binding and subject to ratification by the Members, it would form the basis for continued contract negotiations. 

After AFA rejected this approach, the Company indicated they were not interested in negotiating a revised protocol agreement which was purportedly the point of the meeting between AFA and the Company. Subsequently, the Company sent a letter cancelling the protocol agreement reached last summer. While the Company’s stance is unfortunate, it will not impact the continuation of negotiations as the talks will now be mediated. Frankly, it is exactly just this sort of drama and posturing which has led us to file for mediation in the first place. 

Once we file for mediation, the timing and location of our negotiations, along with the topics and general approach to negotiations will be set by the National Mediation Board. This will allow us to get back to the bargaining table and focus on the issues Flight Attendants have said are important: job security, rest, quality hotels and a compensation package which recognizes our key role in the record profitability of this airline. 

We also want to correct a misstatement by the Company which indicated in recent communications that the NMB would have only two weeks of mediation until the end of the year. The NMB did not say that and the Company has been forced to retract that statement from their letter to AFA. When we are in mediation, the NMB will set the time and place of negotiations. We don’t know why the Company chose to mischaracterize the NMB’s statements but believe they are attempting to scare Flight Attendants by implicitly threatening to drag out negotiations. That is not ok and not a good way to conduct negotiations. We should be focusing on the substance of what matters to Flight Attendants rather than these procedural theatrics. 

For too long, the Company has been able to drag out these negotiations. Remember, for the first two years of Joint Contract discussions, the Company took the unheard of position that we were starting negotiations with a blank slate, attempting to erase the union histories and contracts of sub-CAL, sub-CMI and sub-UAL Flight Attendants. They were treating unionized workgroups with decades of union history and contract language as if they were a newly organized carrier. This stall tactic predictably resulted in virtually no progress over two years of negotiations until the Company was forced to drop the blank slate process.  After a brief period earlier this year where we made substantial progress, in April the Company once again began the stalling the negotiations.

But time for stall tactics and game playing is over. The Railway Labor Act contains a process to reach an agreement and consequences for failures to move negotiations forward. We will be providing more information in the coming weeks about the negotiations process under the Railway Labor Act.  We will need ever increasing pressure on the Company to do the right thing and settle this agreement. So wear your red AFA pin (new shipments of pins are arriving at each local around the system as the pins roll off the production line) to support your Joint Negotiations Committee. Stay informed about the negotiations at OurContract.org or by signing up to be a Negotiations Support Activist (NSA).

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