• JOINT NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE PRESENTS SCHEDULING COUNTER PROPOSAL TO THE COMPANY
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JOINT NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE PRESENTS SCHEDULING COUNTER PROPOSAL TO THE COMPANY

The Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) has spent the past several months working on a counter proposal to the Company's Scheduling proposal. The Scheduling section contains some of the most important contractual provisions for all Flight Attendants. Enormous time and effort was spent working to combine the best elements of both contracts. The goal is to create a scheduling system that works for all Flight Attendants. The major components of the Scheduling section include:

• Pairing Generation (construction)
• Line Building
• Open Time Award process for Lineholders
• Open Time Award process for Reserves
• Rescheduling

The AFA Scheduling proposal is thirty four pages long and includes, with some modifications, a great deal of the current East contract language. As you read this Eline please keep in mind the following:

• The Company wants to completely gut both the East and West contract provisions regarding scheduling and rescheduling.
   
• The Company wants to have a very tight Company-based Scheduling Section that ultimately would allow them to subvert seniority, eliminate domicile ownership of block time and have the ability to reschedule Flight Attendants at their whim.
   
• This Eline is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the Scheduling proposal, but rather an overview. If you don't see something in this Eline that is in our current contract don't assume it is not in the AFA proposal.
   
• Also, please bear in mind, what you are about to read is regarding the initial proposals. The Scheduling section is going to produce some very heated debate between the JNC and the Company. The purpose of this Eline is to inform you of the process and, remind you the process is a negotiation and, is not final and will not be, until a complete contract is agreed to by both Master Executive Councils and the Company and then ratified by the members. In other words-what you read below is only the beginning of the process-not the end result.

There are major differences between the current East and West Scheduling sections. Faced with those differences, and a Company proposal the JNC felt was inadequate, the JNC held many internal meetings over the past several months to draft a counter proposal that meets the needs of both East and West Flight Attendants. Below is an outline of the AFA counter proposal presented to the Company on December 17, 2008.

LINE BUILDING

PBS is a line building system that allows Flight Attendants to create their own lines rather than bidding on constructed "hard" lines of flying. PBS would replace the current East system of Primary Line bids, followed by SAP, Secondary Line bids and then Reserve Line bids with one bidding window. The PBS bid window would close around the middle of the month with the awards posted on the 20th of the month prior to the line of flying.

PBS is valuable to the Company for several reasons. PBS does not allow any "conflict bidding"-in other words-a Flight Attendant can't bid for trips that would conflict with vacation or training. In addition, PBS is designed to eliminate month-to-month bidding conflicts. With the elimination of conflict bidding, the Company can simplify the East system. PBS is also valuable to the Company in that it allows the Company to build trips much closer to when they fly than the current East bidding system allows. This would give the Company better revenue management, improve the operation and increase efficiency.

The December 2002 East Flight Attendant Restructuring Agreement included PBS but it was never implemented for several reasons. The Flight Attendants received no monetary credit for the value of PBS as the agreement was an amendment to our 2000 contract agreed to because of the poor financial condition of the Company (read gun to our heads). PBS has been discussed with East Flight Attendants at numerous Local Council meetings during negotiations updates. In order for the JNC to agree to PBS in the single agreement negotiations, the committee will insist the cost savings PBS produces are fairly distributed to the Flight Attendants throughout the contract.

A PBS system is only as good as the PBS vendor and the actual program. The JNC received presentations from four PBS vendors. In order for the JNC to agree to a PBS system, there must be agreement between AFA and the Company regarding vendor selection, the program itself and all of the PBS parameters.

PAIRING GENERATION AND REVIEW

The JNC believes that flying pairings with the pilots will provide Flight Attendants better benefits such as better duty rigs and pilot FAR duty time and rest requirements.

East Flight Attendants have been paired with the pilots for decades. There are several reasons for this. Those reasons include safety, Crew Resource Management (CRM) and the same duty rigs and FAR protections as the pilots. AFA will not accept a proposal that does not include the same duty rigs as the pilots. There is something inherently wrong with flying the same trip as a pilot and receiving less credit.

The JNC recognizes there is a value to the current West Flight Attendants' ability to fly long haul high credit one-day turns. The JNC proposal includes the ability to carve out certain one-day only turns that exceed eight hours of block time. The committee believes East Flight Attendants would see a value in having more high credit one-day turns (think, one-day island turns).

The JNC has proposed AFA have a stronger role in pairing input and review. The Company only wants to allow pairing review, with little to no input. It does not do AFA much good to only have pairing review after the pairings have been built. AFA wants to have the same review period prior to the final pairing generation as the pilots.

The JNC believes there should be a reasonable mix of pairings and will not accept a proposal that increases the number of four day trips above the amount currently generated on the East system.

OPEN TIME AWARD TO LINEHOLDERS

One of the major differences in the two contracts is the process of the awarding of Open Time to both Lineholders and Reserves. The East system is (with the exception of Secondary Line Augmentation and the ETB) a seniority driven system. The West system is primarily based on a first come first serve system. The JNC has agreed seniority must be the cornerstone of both the Scheduling and Reserve sections.

The AIL provides a great deal of flexibility to Flight Attendants wishing to alter their flying schedule. The Company did not include the AIL in their proposal because it forces them to provide a rather time consuming and labor intensive daily process of redistributing open time. No problem- automate the AIL. The AIL offers flexibility to Flight Attendants and has been a benchmark of our contract for so long it would not serve East Flight Attendants well to implement a PBS system, which eliminates SAP, and lose the flexibility the AIL provides. Just because we have a new management team that never heard of the AIL before the merger does not mean we are willing to give it up.

Under the current AIL system, the only day the AIL is "restricted" by staffing is the first day of a trip. For example, a Flight Attendant on the East has the ability to drop a four day trip the day before the trip originates and pick up-in seniority order- a trip of a lesser duration with no restrictions. Conversely, it also allows a Flight Attendant with a one day trip to pick up a different trip of any duration. The only staffing restriction on the AIL is if a Flight Attendant wants to drop a trip in its entirety and pick up a trip that "touches" another day of the original pairing. If staffing is not sufficient on the day of trip origination that transaction may be restricted and the Flight Attendant would have to originate a trip on the day their trip is scheduled to originate-but it can be any trip in Open Time. During the negotiation of the 2004 Bankruptcy contract, a weekend AIL restriction was forced on the Flight Attendants. The idea was that somehow this restriction would balance out staffing. There has been no evidence to support the weekend restriction therefore; the JNC has removed all weekend restriction language from our proposal.

In place of the AIL, the Company has proposed an Iterative Schedule Adjustment Period (ISAP). The proposed ISAP process works like a month-long AIL for picking up trading or dropping trips up to two days before origination in seniority order. The Company proposal eliminates the day before trip origination AIL process and any open time remaining inside the two day ISAP window is distributed on a first come first serve basis.
Initially, ISAP would open on the 20th of the month subsequent to the monthly line of flying and would remain open for five days. Once the initial ISAP bid closes all bids for trades, pick up or drop of open time are processed in seniority order. Thereafter, the ISAP bid window will remain open continuously throughout the month closing out two days before the day of origination.

ISAP has one very restrictive component - staffing. Unlike the AIL, the ISAP process is based on staffing for every day of the month. ISAP has some very interesting features, such as the ability to perform AIL and ETB type transactions, throughout the month- not just the day before as with the AIL. The major drawback is exchanging trips with Company Open Time is based on staffing and what the Company calls the" Reserve Availability Matrix" (RAM). The Company bases the daily RAM on a "positive" or "negative" number. The Company wants complete control of the RAM and as we know on the East, complete control means just that. The JNC believes that the RAM will be "negative" more often than not.

Example:

A Flight Attendant has a four day trip spanning days 20-23 of a given month and sees a two-day trip in Open Time the 20th and 21st of the month. In seniority order, the Flight Attendant bids to drop the four-day and pick-up the two-day. The bid would only be awarded if there is a "positive" RAM on the 22nd and the 23rd. If the RAM was negative on the 22nd or the 23rd the bid would not be awarded.

The JNC believes there is some value to ISAP as a forward looking flexibility tool but believes the predominately non-staffing based AIL process must also be available.

The Company's proposal did not include an Electronic Trade Board (ETB). In order to provide a mechanism for Flight Attendants to further adjust their schedules the JNC proposal includes a real time ETB.

OPEN TIME AWARD TO RESERVES

The JNC has already traded several Reserve proposals with the Company. The AFA proposal uses seniority rather than Least Time Order as the mechanism for distribution of open time to Reserves. The Company has made some movement in their proposals, but not enough for the JNC to close out the section therefore, the section is currently tabled. The current Reserve systems for both East and West reserves are in need of a major overhaul. The JNC is committed to improving the system.

RESCHEDULING

There are other very important parts of the Scheduling section such as rescheduling and reroute provisions. There are fundamental differences in the Company and the JNC proposals.

The Company wants to dramatically alter the way rescheduling and rerouting is now provided for in the East contract. The East contract contains very important provisions that provide a great deal of protection for Flight Attendants in the event of rescheduling or reroutes. The following paragraph from the Company's proposal says it all:

Crew Scheduling may reschedule a Lineholder or a Reserve even if the Lineholder or Reserve's pairing operates as scheduled. Such rescheduling may be necessary to protect the operation, resolve crew legalities, flight cancellations, etc. A Lineholder whose full or partial pairing is cancelled prior to report shall accept a pairing or a combination of a specific pairing and AT days, or AT days alone (more about AT days in a minute).

Furthermore, the rescheduled pairing shall not report earlier than the Flight Attendant's original pairing or release later than six (6) hours after the Flight Attendant's original pairing. A Flight Attendant may agree to waive any or all of the limitations in this paragraph - (but then there is no pay protection.)

The Company proposal includes something called "Available for Time" or AT days. Essentially this requires Flight Attendants to remain available for another assignment in order to be pay protected. The Company proposal subverts seniority, as it creates a process to award open time to Flight Attendants whose trips have been altered, flown by another crew or cancelled, before awarding that time to Flight Attendants in seniority order.

This type of loose language effectively would eliminate the East pay protection provisions such as:
-Last Trip or Series of Trips pay protection.
-Illegal Through No Fault pay Protection.
-Equipment or Crew Substitution pay protection.
-The East contractual requirement to make every effort possible to return a rescheduled or rerouted Flight Attendant back to her/his domicile at or before the time of the originally scheduled pairing.

The AFA proposal contains the pay protection language of the current East agreement. One very important element of the East Contract is "base ownership of time". This concept protects all Flight Attendants in all domiciles. In a multi-base airline, time cannot be shuttled to other domiciles at the Company's whim unless there is no other way to protect the operation

GENERAL

The AFA proposal also contains many of the same provisions currently in the East agreement such as:

-Crew Scheduling Errors
-Trip Trades through Crew Scheduling
-Concept of Obligation (in order to more evenly distribute open time)
-Overprojection adjustments
-Last Live Leg (the ability for someone else to volunteer to work your last live leg)
-Report/No Fly (AFA proposed increasing the "two hours show/no go language to the daily VM)
-Current East crew compliment per aircraft type
-Phone Recordings
-Jetway trades

Ok, so maybe this was more than an overview. The fact of the matter is the Company wants a lot of changes to both agreements. The JNC worked very hard developing a proposal that broadens and protects the Flight Attendants ability to have as much flexibility and pay protections as possible while balancing the needs of the Company. Nothing is going to come easy in this negotiations and nothing will be sacrificed for the sake of Company convenience.

Thank you,

Mike Flores, President
The US Airways Master Executive Council
AFA-CWA

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AFA Local Numbers
 
Council 41 DCA 703-212-8090
Council 69 BOS 781-289-8454
Council 70 PHL 215-492-0840
Council 82 LGA 315-736-3483
Council 89 CLT 704-527-0325

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