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        You are here: Home / Archives for Committees

        Reserve Quarterly Meeting Minutes (12/17/2015)

        January 5, 2016 00:34

        Click the link below to view the minutes from the December 17th Quarterly Reserve Meeting with Scheduling Management.

         

        December 17 2015 – Reserve MTG Minutes

        Filed Under: Reserve Committee

        “Wings of Sobriety” Telephonic Meetings

        January 4, 2016 15:36

        A message from your AFA Alaska EAP Committee

        Wings of Sobriety telephonic meetings for Flight Attendants in recovery or wishing to explore their substance use concerns are scheduled for:

        • Wednesdays at 3 PM EST
        • Saturdays at 9 AM EST

        Each meeting will last up to one (1) hour.  The conference call in number is 1-855-544-2320.  For International dialing Instructions, please hit the link below or visit our website at http://www.fadap.org/wingsofsobriety.

        Flight Attendant Recovery Story

        A former Flight Attendant shares her personal journey into recovery.  Click here to read the story.

        AFA EAP Logo

        Filed Under: EAP/Professional Standards Committee Tagged With: EAP, recovery, substance use

        Mental Health Resolutions for the New Year

        December 28, 2015 05:00

         

        A message from your AFA Alaska Employee Assistance Program (EAP)/Professional Standards Committee

        The New Year is not just a ritual. It is the celebration of new hopes and dreams. It is an opportunity to start with a clean slate. Typically, New Year resolutions tend to focus on weight, general health and finances.   But, what might the new year offer us if we used it as an opportunity to commit to improvements in our emotional and mental well-being. Below are seven positive mental health resolutions that you can borrow for your new year.

        1. “I will treat myself with respect and speak nicely about myself.” Try taping a list of positive characteristics about yourself in various places throughout the house to remind you of these affirmations.
        2. “I will be physically active on a daily basis.” Multiple studies show a link between exercise and improved mental health.
        3. “I will act and not react.” Many times we feel like everyone is “pushing our buttons”. When this happens, we are caught up in a reaction cycle. If you know you’ll be around someone who says negative things, plan for this and have a list in your head of disarming statements. You might even consider modifying your plans to limit exposure to negative people.
        4. “I will learn to relax and enjoy.” Many times we become so busy we forget how or even when to take care of ourselves. Find or “re-discover” an activity that is relaxing and enjoyable to you. Dedicate time to this daily or at a minimum, weekly.
        5. “I will be mindful.” Being mindful is about staying in the moment. We cannot change yesterday and we cannot predict tomorrow. We do, however, have control over our attentiveness in the here and now. So, commit to being aware in the moment, and enjoy that moment.
        6. “I will work towards being the person I want to be.” When we see life as a journey and a time to continue to be the person we desire to be, we find hope and fulfillment in our tomorrows.
        7. “I will resolve to be mentally healthy”. There is still a stigma about seeing a mental health professional. However, it is truly one of the healthiest things we can do for ourselves. A therapist gives us an unbiased ear and can also help us to understand why we do the things we do … think of seeing a therapist as a mental health oil change. If you need assistance finding a referral, give your AFA EAP a call. Your local AFA EAP committee members are listed at www.afacwa.org/eap.   We are just a phone call away.

        These suggestions have been adapted from an email written by Chip Coffey, the Director of Outpatient Services at St. Luke’s Behavioral Health Center.

        AFA EAP Logo

        Filed Under: EAP/Professional Standards Committee Tagged With: EAP, health, New Year

        Temporary Waiver to Allow Crew Scheduling to Withhold Trips from Open Time for Assignment to Reserves at Noon

        December 23, 2015 13:16

        Temporary contractual waiver in order to minimize Junior Assignment

        In order to minimize Junior Assignment for tomorrow, the Master Executive Council (MEC) has granted the temporary ability for Crew Scheduling to pull trips from Open Time for Christmas Eve assignment to Reserves effective immediately (approximately 12:30 PM PT at the time the waiver was granted).

         

        Therefore Section 10.E.d [Open Time] should be temporarily interpreted as the following:

         

        Crew Scheduling may remove sequences from OT no earlier than 2:00 12:00 PM PT for reserve assignments for the following day except as provided for in Section 7.F.1.a. [“Job Familiarization” Flights…]. Any sequence not assigned to a Reserve by 6:00 PM PT will be returned to OT. Any sequences that become available after 2:00 12:00 PM PT will be subject to the withholding provisions of 1.d., below.

         

        Any other contractual citations that refer to the withholding of trips at 2:00 PM PT for assignment to Reserves should be temporarily interpreted as noon. Example of 10.E.1.c [Open Time]:

         

        Crew Scheduling may withhold a sequence from OT for up to fifteen minutes (:15) when necessary to determine a Like Sequence pursuant to Section 10.R. [Reassignments] and 12.J. [Crew Scheduling Trading Errors], or a Reserve or JA assignment. This includes sequences that become available between 2:01 12:01 PM PT and 6:00 PM PT the day prior to report. If Crew Scheduling does not assign the sequence within fifteen minutes (:15) but neglects to return it to OT, a Flight Attendant may contact Crew Scheduling and request the trade/pickup on a first-come, first-served basis. If the Flight Attendant then flies the sequence, s/he will be paid one (1.0) TFP in addition to all applicable compensation.

         

        Although the contractual time is 2 PM under the current contract, trips could be pulled at noon in the previous contract. Therefore, the MEC does not anticipate a significant impact compared to the benefit received by minimizing JA.

         

        “Premium” Premium Open Time

         

        Inflight management has agreed to start widely using “premium” Premium Open Time, so we are appreciative of the step in the right direction. Crew Scheduling has posted double time (2x or $$ in eMaestro), but AFA will continue to strongly advocate for the use of additional premiums in order to further minimize JA and protect the operation.

         

        Premium pay

         

        Any premiums are paid on flights flown and not on Minimum Pay Rules (MPRs) or Sit Pay. All TFP is credited at straight time towards your 480 TFP thresholds, Quarterly Productivity Premium (QPP) and other similar provisions. For example, a 5.0 TFP trip at 2x premium is paid at double your trip rate but still credited at 5.0 TFP towards your thresholds. It is somewhat of a flight attendant urban legend that “the trip is worth 10.0 TFP.” It is true that the trip is worth the equivalent of 10.0 TFP at straight pay, but it’s really not paid out that way.

        * * *

         

        We apologize in advance if anybody is inconvenienced by this temporary departure from the norm.

         

        In solidarity,

         

        Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow and Stephen Couckuyt

        AFA-Alaska-Logo-Transparent-Background

        Filed Under: Latest News, Scheduling Committee Tagged With: 2015, JA, Open Time, OT, Scheduling, waiver

        Junior Assignment December 2015

        December 22, 2015 18:00

        CSKD is currently JA’ing in Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles

         

        Crew Scheduling is currently utilizing the new Junior Assignment (JA) language in Section 9 Junior Available and Premium Open Time in order to staff flights over the next several days. AFA believes JA is currently limited to the Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles domiciles, but there are no guarantees that other domiciles will remain unaffected.

         

        So what happened to staffing?

         

        Going into this week management believed staffing was more than adequate. However there has been a significant spike in sick leave utilization over the past several days that exceeded staffing resources. Inflight management directed Crew Scheduling to start JA’ing in order to maintain the operation just after 10 AM Pacific Time this morning.

         

        No “premium” (2x or greater) Premium Open Time

         

        Despite the fact that your Negotiating Committee specifically advocated for a tiered Premium Open Time system in order to maximize flexibility for Crew Scheduling and minimize the potential for JA, management has refused to utilize Premium Open Time higher than a 1.5x premium. Why would management want to force flight attendants to fly when they are scheduled to be off duty and pay them a 2.5x premium rather than offering Premium Open Time to eager volunteers at, say, double time (2x premium or listed as $$ in eMaestro)? Or alternatively, if the Company anticipated that it was going to pay the JA premium of 2.5x, but Crew Scheduling could find an eager volunteer through Premium OT at the same premium (2.5x premium or listed as $$$ in eMaestro), wouldn’t it make sense to take the volunteer over the draftee?

         

        We believe Inflight management has been unwilling to offer Premium Open Time any higher than the standard (1.5x premium or listed as $ in eMaestro) because they fear creating an expectation that such premiums will be routinely available around the holidays. There is a certain logic to that line of thinking, but the Master Executive Council (MEC) does not understand how avoiding setting expectations for “premium” Premium OT is better than JA’ing. The Company is going to spend more money JA’ing than if management had sweetened Premium OT to 2x premium prior to JA’ing.

        JA eligibility

         

        A flight attendant cannot be Junior Assigned on vacation or while off duty—any JA notification must occur while on duty and prior to the conclusion of the scheduled debrief period. The list is comprised of all flight attendants on duty during the JA period in question and who are legal to accept a JA. Assignments are made off that list in reverse seniority (junior) order.

         

        A flight attendant cannot be JA’d into any day that was traded away or dropped from her/his original schedule as long as the day(s) has not been subsequently restored prior to JA. There are several other contractual provisions in Section 9 that govern JA procedures, which are too numerous to detail here. A JA list will be posted after the fact and accessible via the World of Inflight.  If you believe that you were JA’d out of order, you will have the ability to review the list yourself or you can seek assistance from AFA.

        JA procedures

         

        Under the new contract, Crew Scheduling may JA up to the full calendar day prior to the trip. Unfortunately, Inflight management waited until after 10am this morning to JA, which very likely resulted in artificially inflating the seniority of those who were ultimately JA’d. You see, Crew Scheduling lost the opportunity to potentially JA anybody who returned to domicile prior to 10am this morning. If JA had been initiated earlier, many more flight attendants would have been in the JA pool.

         

        AFA believes management waited so long because they were seeking a contractual waiver from the MEC. Management asked if the MEC would allow Reserves to be assigned earlier than provided by contract, believing this would minimize the need to JA. The MEC declined the waiver, and JA began shortly thereafter.

         

        In our opinion, Inflight management ironically made JA worse by going more senior as a result of the wait. This is extremely unfortunate considering that AFA provided the exact same feedback and recommendations to Inflight management earlier this year. Very similar circumstances occurred during the last and only other time we have JA’d under the new contractual rules.

         

        Trading JA and Pay

         

        Flight Attendants may trade or give away JA assignments. Until the new JA rules are programmed into the new crew management system, flight attendants will be able to post a JA trip on the eMaestro bulletin board using a workaround: Crew Scheduling must first remove the default “PP” label code. Crew Scheduling was initially unaware of the workaround earlier in the day, but going forward they have been informed of the interim procedure. For your information, the new system is called Jeppesen Crew Tracking Enterprise (JCTE) and it is scheduled to go live later in 2016.

         

        Suggestion: use the “Comments” field to indicate the trip is a Junior Assignment at 2.5x premium. Junior Assignments are paid at 2.5x premium for all flying (excludes Minimum Pay Rules and Sit Pay). If a JA is flown on a flight attendant paid holiday (e.g. Christmas), the total premium is 3.5x for flights flown on the holiday.

         

        Crew Scheduling must manually process the actual trading of the trip(s) in eMaestro. It is Crew Administration’s responsibility to reconcile the JA pay with the trip, but we anticipate this will all be automated in JCTE. Until implementation of JCTE, we recommend that you submit an Activity Claim Form on the World of Inflight in order to claim the JA premium.

         

        Recommendations so far

         

        In summary, AFA would have preferred that Inflight management had more aggressively utilized “premium” Premium OT once management had identified a staffing need prior to the date in question. If increasing premiums did not improve staffing and management deemed it necessary to JA, that decision ideally should have been made much earlier in the morning in order to sufficiently widen the pool.

         

        * * *

         

        There are many moving parts to the operation at the moment, so it will likely take some time to gather all the facts and for management and AFA to debrief the holiday staffing. In the meantime if you have any questions or concerns, contact one of your local Scheduling Committee members or Local Executive Council (LEC) officers (ANC 30 | SEA 19 | PDX 39 | LAX 18 | SAN 15).

         

         

        In solidarity,

         

        Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Gesch, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Sandra Morrow, Stephen Couckuyt; and MEC Scheduling Committee Chairperson Jake Jones

        AFA-Alaska-Logo-Transparent-Background

        Filed Under: Latest News, Scheduling Committee Tagged With: 2015, JA, Open Time, OT, Scheduling, staffing

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