Representing the Flight Attendants of Alaska + Hawaiian
Our Council #19 Officer elections are well underway, have you voted yet?
Please remember to submit your vote by 9:00AM PST on May 18th!
If you did not receive your activation code, you can visit: https://afacwa-elections.org/request-new-activation-code.
For general election information, visit: https://afacwa-elections.org/alaska-airlines-council-19-sea
Elections are underway for Seattle AFA-CWA Officers
Elections for the next term of office are underway. The three-year term begins July 1, 2023. In order for your votes to be recorded, you must be a member in good standing. However all members will be mailed ballots. If you have recently moved, and have not changed your mailing address with AFA-CWA, you may not receive a ballot. If you need assistance, please contact one of your local officers.
Election Schedule:
4-25-2023: Voting notice and voting guide are mailed containing your personal 16-digit activation code.
4-28-2023: 12:00PM EST – Polls open and voting begins
5-18-2023: 3:00PM EST – Polls close and the election count takes place
Here are the candidates running for office:
LEC PRESIDENT:
Paula Isla-McGill
Kiara O’Bryant
Teresa (Terry) Taylor
LEC VIce President:
Ian Haywood
Jake Jones
Melinda Jorge-Henderson
Ty Tufono-Chaussee
LEC Secretary:
Adam Clarey
Bianca Dew
Jarod McNeill
LEC Council Representative (2 positions):
Megan E Brown
LeAnne Canton
Daphne Clarkson
Anuhea Beverly Coubertier
Erik Mastrud
Jorge “Martin” Monteblanco
Jarod “Jerry” Sinclair
Andrew Stinson
Julie Thornton
Kaitlyn Zemp
We are approaching the end of term for our current Council #19 LEC Officers. In accordance with the Article VIII of the AFA-CWA Constitution and Bylaws, all Councils in Category II must nominate and elect officers for the term beginning July 1, 2023 and ending June 30, 2026 (three year term). Local Council Officers to be elected will be LEC President, LEC Vice President, LEC Secretary and two (2) Council Representatives.
In order to be eligible to vote, you must be an active member in good standing(dues must be paid up to date).
The first step in the process is nominating candidates for each office. Every active AFA member in good standing is eligible to nominate one Flight Attendant to each LEC Office for their respective Local Council. There is no candidate list provided for nominations since any active AFA member of a Local Council, who is inn good standing and is committed to serve, is eligible to be nominated.
You will receive a Voting Notice and Instructions guide via postal mail which includes a personal 16-digit activation code that is required to log into the voting system in order to obtain a username and password. You will then be able to access the balloting section and cast your vote. The entire process can only be accomplished via the internet in one session, but please ensure you completely follow the instructions.
Information on the next steps after nominations will come out at a later time.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Recent Hotel Changes
Charleston: We have recently contracted with ———-. This was the AFA Hotel Committee’s choice, and we are happy the company secured this for our Flight Attendants. The hotel is right in town and is close to dining, shopping and entertainment. We hope you enjoy it.
Guadalajara: The current hotel we have been using (the —-) is quite a drive, so a hotel closer to the airport was needed for the short layovers. Both AFA and ALPA chose the ———— by the airport because of the proximity to the airport, the fact that it is a brand new build, restaurant offerings and hours that coordinate well with our arrival times and the amenities offered. We hope our crews will be happy with this hotel for short layovers. Please note, we are not giving up the RIU downtown for the longer layovers.
PLEASE NOTE: The above hotel names were removed for safety/security reasons, as this is public website.
Hotel Incidental Charges
We are still getting reports of Flight Attendants making room charges or using items in the room that are not complimentary (snacks, mini bar or water). Please remember that water is NOT complimentary in all hotels, so make sure to check if there is a price attached to the bottle etc. Always remember to leave a credit card on file or pay when you check out if you are planning on making room charges or using room amenities that are not complimentary. Checking out and not paying for incidentals can lead to discipline up to and including discharge, so please be careful.
Refrigerators and Microwaves
We would like to remind you that refrigerators and microwaves are NOT contractual, and we do not have plans on adding these to the language. When we do a site inspection, we do take this into account and we ask if they are available or if they can be made available. If we have two hotels that are comparable to choose from we take this into account when making the final decision. The reason we are not looking to add this to our language is that it could potentially lower the quality of hotels we have to choose from, including their locations. We will of course always advocate to choose properties that have the most amenities, but will take everything into account including location, etc.
Crew Care
Do you use Crew Care? Anytime you have a contractual violation with your hotel accommodations, a Crew Care should be completed. You can find the link on the Inflight Website > Hotel & Station > Hotel Links > My Crew Care. If you have a hotel contract violation or if a hotel is having issues, please report it. Please note, it is also nice to complete a Crew Care with compliments on hotels or for individual staff. We take these into account when selecting hotels or deciding to continue a relationship with a current property. Also, when you send in a compliment on a specific employee of a property, API will forward it to management on site and that employee will be recognized!
Upcoming Hotel Site Inspections
Site inspections are common when a contract comes up for renewal. Sometimes a current hotel is not interested in continuing the relationship, the hotel no longer meets the contractual language or we are simply re-assessing the market to see what other properties have become available. We have site inspections coming up in the following markets:
Hotel Etiquette
Please keep hotel etiquette and expectations in mind when on your layovers, including behavior of your guests. Even though you are on a layover, you are representing Alaska Airlines in a room paid for by them. Bad behavior will make its way back to management and will be acted on.
Hotel Shuttles
We utilize two different kinds of shuttles on our layovers. At some of our hotels we use hotel provided transportation and at others, we use a third party. When using a third party, it is at their discretion on whether they allow guests of employees or not. Please keep a few things in mind. Some of our transportation companies use an SUV that will only have enough seats for the working crew. In Charleston, the provider charges $10 per guest. The company we use is a small company and that fee covers the extra insurance they have to carry for guests. Also, in PVR a bulletin was previously issued reminding that guests cannot ride in the shuttle until further notice, as of today that bulletin has not been over turned. This is the policy of the transportation company. Please make sure if you are bringing guests to any of our layover hotels, be prepared to pay for transportation in case its not available for your guests (vehicle not large enough, etc). Also we would like to remind you that the shuttle time when leaving a hotel is the time that shuttle should be leaving the hotel, not the time you meet in the lobby.
As always, we advocate hard for the best hotels we can possibly secure. We always appreciate your feedback, we take it to heart and use all feedback when making our recommendations on crew layover hotels. If you have questions that do not warrant a Crew Care, you can reach the Seattle Hotel Chairperson at sea.hotel.chair@afaalaska.org.
In Solidarity,
Your Seattle Hotel Committee
WINTER 2023 SCHEDULING UPDATE
DECEMBER 2022 Sea Snow and Ice storm
We saw a huge amount of OS tickets regarding scheduling and pay concerns from the December 2022 Sea Snow and Ice storm which kept us quite busy in January.
Most popular topics included:
AFA and Management held a SEA Snowstorm debrief in early January to discuss relevant issues. We appreciate and extend a big thank you to Jake Jones for his assistance overseeing tickets as we were swamped.
RAINMAKER – PAY AND USER GUIDES
There has been an uptick in questions about pay and Rainmaker. Questions include how to reach out to Crew Pay, pay queries, how to respond to comments, how to expand pay buckets, timelines for crew pay responses, what needs an activity claim form, and what processes are automated.
Please continue to use these available resources as tools to assist with understanding how to use Rainmaker.
All this Information can be found on the FA webpage > administration > pay & benefits > rainmaker
Although it may be time consuming, we recommend that all flight attendants take the time to review these guides to assist them in understanding Rainmaker and how they are paid.
A few highlights:
Rainmaker User Guide (pages 4, 5, & 20) outline details of pay timelines.
Crew Pay will not process certain trip pay concerns until the month is completed. These reports are a manual process and they pull ALL reports at month-end and then process. FAs can expect that in these certain pay scenarios it could be up to two weeks for Crew Pay to respond, until the report is pulled and trip pay worked This typically can take up to the 10th of the month following occurrence that resulted in the query.
CREW ACCESS FILTERS
We continue to get tickets opened with the Crew Access filter not showing correctly (showing UTC TIME). This is a known issue. We hope to have this fixed in the March Crew Access release.
Please continue to open IT tickets and report your concerns to management.
WAIVING CREW REST 48/7 – 24/7
This time of year, we get tickets from disappointed FAs who waive their Contractual Rest. Due to operational concerns (typically weather related) their waived rest falls below FAR minimums. They are removed from their trips or portion of (SIP point) without Pay Protection until their rest is restored. (Section 8.N. Waiver of Contractual Rest).
Section 8.N. WAIVER OF CONTRACTUAL REST
A Flight Attendant who waives any contractually required rest, and who then operationally would fall below any CFR-required rest period, will be pulled from sufficient flights to resolve the CFR illegality. The Flight Attendant will not be pay protected.
SHORT LAYOVERS (10:00 – 10:40 hours duration)
The past several months we have seen a slight increase in pairings with short layover duration at 10:10 – 10:40 minute layovers. (mostly GDL) We requested a review of the 10:40 GDL layovers.
Continue to track short layovers with longer duty days with multiple landings.
If you see a consistent trip with a short layover please let us know.
We do not have statistics on Fatigue Risk Management however we do want FAs to be aware of this program. You can find the full text of the AFA LOA under Letters Of Agreement in our CBA – Fatigue Risk Management Plan – AFA LOA 2020-06-02
VACATION PAYOUT REQUEST
Flight Attendants may request to have their 2023 vacation paid out in advance of the scheduled dates.
There is a form for FAs to request and submit to Crew Pay. This is found at:
Instructions are found within the form to explain how to request early pay for vacation.
CARE RETREAT
Many FAs were assigned Care Retreat in March.
Those who have been assigned can trade their March care retreat period starting on February 17th @ 9:00 am (the day after March open time trading begins). Information is found on the PBS information page.
If they want to pick up a day in February, they can find available dates in February open time. If they find a date that works they’ll need to call CS to manually place it on their schedule. They need to be sure the March date is removed.
This is considered a company required training. You can access this information on the PBS website under Information – Trading Timelines at the bottom of the chart. (Trading of Recurrent and company required training).
NEW COMMUTER FLOWCHART
AFA has finalized a new COMMUTER FLOWCHART.
It can be found in the Scheduling section on the AFA Website, along with the Pre-Cancellation, Reassignment, Reassignment Pay and Irregular Ops Quick Reference Sheet.
NEW DIRECTOR INFLIGHT CREW SCHEDULING
Sara Cook has been promoted to Director of Inflight Crew Scheduling
NEW SEA SCHEDULING COMMITTEE MEMBER
We want to welcome Paula Isla-McGill to the Sea Scheduling Committee. Paula has completed AFA 101 and will soon be trained in the OS Ticket System. Once completed she will be added to our committee list on the AFA Webpage.
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