Source: http://ourcontract.org

The JNC spent three days on January 12-14 at the offices of the National Mediation Board negotiating with United management. This was the first bargaining session of the year, and the first since the parties last met in November.

On Tuesday, January 12, the Company presented us with another set of proposals on Hours of Service, Scheduling and Reserve. We spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday reviewing the Company’s work in order to better understand it so we can develop our counter proposal for the next session.  

As we have told you in previous updates, the JNC’s original proposals on Hours of Service, Scheduling and Reserve were presented to the Company when mediation began last October. These were not opening positions like you would expect to see at the very beginning of negotiations; these proposals were based in large part on the work that had been done by the Hours of Service subcommittee in the Facilitated Problem Solving process. The AFA members who worked on that subcommittee, and their Company counterparts, spent over a year discussing each party’s interests, and building solutions around them. It was hard work and it required hard decisions and compromises in order to create the framework for the Scheduling sections of a joint Contract. It’s gratifying to hear that the Company recognizes the Flight Attendant priorities in our proposals, and that they have accepted some of them, is recognition of the hard work the Hours of Service subcommittee put in. The Company’s proposal this week should definitely be viewed as making headway in a number of areas, but we are still very far apart on other aspects of these important core pieces of a joint Contract. 

On the morning of Thursday, January 14, we presented the Company with proposals on Trainings & General Meetings, Sick Leave, Vacations and Leaves of Absence. Like the Scheduling proposals, a lot of work was done on these four sections by other subcommittees during the Facilitated Problem Solving process last year. The JNC has worked to fill in the blanks and finalize all of them. Thursday afternoon, the Company gave us proposals on Personnel Files and the Commuter Program. After some discussion, we were able to reach tentative agreements on both of these sections at the end of the day.

Reaching tentative agreements on sections is always positive. However, there is still much work that needs to be done. Responsive and productive proposals from both parties will be needed in order to accomplish that work. 

Negotiations will resume on January 27^th in Chicago.