February 12, 2005

Jerry,

I want to take a few moments of your time to relay comments I have been asked to express to you from Flight Attendants in my base. I would also like to ask for your indulgence and allow me to express some of my own comments as well. 

I have been in office for seven months and during that time we have all worked hard to negotiate and ratify a contract that will help US Airways become a competitive player in the industry. That effort was a high wire act; trying to find a balance between what the Company and the membership both needed to survive. Time will tell if we succeeded. While negotiations were long and arduous I don't believe there was much bitterness on either side. Implementation however is becoming a different story. The "bad things" often find a way of getting implemented before the "good things". Members are seeing the immediate effect of vacation loss, sick pay reductions and trip credit reductions that all make the every day reality of doing this job very difficult. The ERI and VFLR are months away. The implementation dates for the ETB and TWOP are listed as "targeted". The MEC knows that a switch can't be flipped to accomplish implementation and the implementation committee and the Company are both working through the process. While we are trying our best to inform the membership it is apparent to those of us in the trenches the membership is growing increasingly frustrated and disillusioned. Members are working on dirty airplanes that are inadequately catered trying to provide a consistent level of quality service to our customer. Worn uniform pieces are not being replaced because of the cash saving moratorium. We work in ill-fitting worn uniforms that hardly look or make anyone feel professional. While our cash position is obviously a factor, neither the customer nor the employee is comforted by the appearance of the staff or the product. It won't matter how much money we save if we lose the confidence of the customer or the employee. Like the old saying goes if "we don't take care of our customer, someone else will". The same adage should be applied to the employee. As the industry evolves, taking care of customer will involve more than just the lowest ticket price and just having a job will not increase productivity or performance. 

In the view of many of my members the In-Flight Service department is not providing any kind of "service" at all. Rather than monitor the product, perform check rides or instill a sense of leadership the department is viewed as a police force whose sole job is to administer discipline. There is a widespread belief among the membership that their job is to fire as many people as possible in order for the Company to decrease the number of VFLR slots as possible. The Dependability Control Program needs to be revamped. The current program is abusive and often discriminatory. A 30 year employee can have 6 sick calls (now 5), be placed on Level 1, an ITI (illegal trip improvement) will move the employee to Level 2 and then a low block to Level 3 . Getting sick is out of our control, forgetting to call in by noon is human and being five minutes late due to traffic is possible. That employee must then survive a full year mistake free to avoid termination. A year is a long time to go without making a mistake. I have seen good people who have dedicated years of loyal service to this Company be terminated for a bad year. As told to me by members of the department the purpose of the program is to see an improvement in dependability. I have personally seen two F/As terminated who were on level 3 for 11 months with no infractions and then made a mistake. Both are long time employees who were well respected by their peers and our customers. It seems to me these employees made an improvement but fell short by a matter of weeks and now all parties will lose. Sherry Groff and I had a discussion last week about why long time employees with otherwise excellent records have in the past year or two fallen off the track. My observation is this group has seen everything they know change. They are getting older, working harder and seeing their efforts characterized as liabilities on a balance sheet. Every day people are wondering if the career they spent years in is going to be enough to provide for the day to day necessities much less retirement. Our job used to be fun. Now we spend our time working short staffed, wondering when we will have time to eat and all the while looking over our shoulder for the next Al Qaeda terrorist. The media portrays us as spoiled and overpaid. Stress, anxiety and disillusionment have taken a toll and frankly the pot is boiling over.

This new agreement radically changes our work rules and requirements. The ETB and TWOP will be a challenge to explain and administer. A learning curve similar to the implementation of SAP will be necessary. The current DCP policy will "catch" a lot of people making mistakes. There is a difference between people making mistakes and those trying to abuse the system. The current DCP program does not recognize that difference.

I am not naïve Jerry. There are people who have taken liberties, abused the system and skated by for years and then events caught up to them and they were terminated. Some of those lied to me, themselves and the Company. I don't lose much sleep over those cases. I do however know there is a difference between those people and the long time hard working employees who have had a bad year or made a mistake. For those people I do lose sleep.

Policies can be designed to catch anyone. I have recently seen In-Flight demand that a reserve provide receipts for items purchased in CLT in order to prove she was in base when it was mistakenly believed she was not. Those not living on expense accounts don't keep receipts and nothing in our contract requires us to provide any such accounting. People are being asked to prove a negative. Supervisors spend so much time tracking down Drs.' notes, travel records and crew scheduling tapes they have no time to do anything else. The membership now believes the department is simply out to end their careers. In short, instead of In-Flight working to improve our product it looks like an episode of C.S.I Miami as supervisors track down "leads". No matter how the rules are tightened or interpreted some people will find a way to break them. Those who do will surface and have to face the consequences. A disproportionate amount of time is being spent by supervisors digging below the surface. 

I am told by the In-Flight staff that calls from F/As about the new contract provisions are frequent. I am also told by the same staff members that they often don't know the answers yet and they refer the members to the union. I have spent hours in CLT In-Flight talking to the staff about the new agreement trying to provide them and by extension the membership the information I have. This is the Company's contract too and I would assume the Company feels they have a duty to inform their supervisors and employees about this new contract. I know that a great deal of information has been placed on theHub. Believe it or not Jerry not everyone spends as much time on the computer as we do. I am amazed by the number of people I talk to who don't own a computer. For those people just signing in for their trip is a challenge. Even the computer savvy have a difficult time accessing theHub from the ancient and unstable crew room computers in order to receive up to date information.

I applaud your recent initiatives regarding retirement information and Partners For Change. I believe more work needs to be done. The past few years have been difficult for all of us. The world, the industry and all of our lives have been changed forever. It is not enough to acknowledge that we must evolve or die. The intent of this letter is not to chastise or inflame but to inform you that my group is rapidly losing faith in the Company, the leadership and the goal.

Some of the membership feels it is the Company's intention to make everything so bad we will all quit and be replaced with low cost workers. While that would be a bean counters dream, I don't think a customer service business can survive that strategy for very long. Yesterday JetBlue celebrated their fifth year in business and accepted delivery of their 71st airplane. Their press statement spoke to their employees' faith and commitment to the Company as the reason for their success. Remember this, as every day goes by their costs will increase while ours will decrease. US Airways management recognized that our model must change in order to survive. Part of the change involved lower costs. Labor met the test. That alone will not insure our success. People perform well when they feel appreciated and are rewarded for their efforts. We all know the financial constraints US Airways faces. We have given up money, benefits and working conditions to keep our jobs. Like it or not ours is an aging workforce that will face more sickness and family responsibilities in the future. In what is proven to be an unhealthy working environment our members will work with less sick time and be subjected to more restrictive policies. For some, FMLA and mail order prescriptions may work but for others those policies do not. Our financial commitment from the Company is clearly contractual but the moral and ethical treatment is not. The culture of the Company must change now or the Company will fail. Future investment in this Company is a necessity but without a rapid change this Company will go under before anyone gets a chance to write a check. I don't want that to happen. Finance alone can't continue to drive US Airways. Common sense, fair play and financial responsibility will be necessary for our survival. I hear this everyday from our employees. You need to listen to them because they, not the court or investors, interact with our revenue source every flight every day. In 23 years I have never seen the morale so low, the despair so high and the sense of worth so clouded.

Respectfully,

Mike Flores
LECP Council 89