Jeppesen Crew Exchange (JCE) is almost certainly going live for trading later today. What exactly does that mean and what should you expect?
First, the Master Executive Council (MEC) recognizes all of the hard work of so many: Your AFA MEC Scheduling Chairperson Jake Jones and the Scheduling Committee, MEC Reserve Committee Chairperson Jarod McNeill and the Reserve Committee, Flight Attendant JCE Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), the Crew Schedulers, Jeppesen programmers and more, all of whom have spent many sleepless hours preparing for the official cutover. Secondly, the MEC thanks all of you in advance for your patience, which is definitely going to be tested over the coming months. Why?
Jeppesen Crew Exchange (JCE) looks, feels and functions with little to no resemblance to eMaestro. We somewhat expected that, but who knew we would be missing eMaestro so soon? The new colors and icons are nice (except what’s the deal with a palm tree for vacation and sick leave?), but in looking at the system in totality we are very, very concerned about minimal functionality. The MEC is hoping that JCE is appropriately programmed to not violate any of our contractual rules, but we are not entirely confident that will be the case. We’ll know for certain very soon. If you believe JCE is not correctly programmed, contact one of your local Scheduling Committee members so that AFA can track the concern and file a contractual grievance if necessary. If you are having any technical difficulties with JCE whatsoever, it is absolutely critical that you generate a ticket with the IT Help Desk: either call 877-238-1077 or email help.desk@alaskaair.com.
JCE Video Tutorials
AFA has done our very best to advocate for additional testing throughout the process, but management has made a decision to proceed despite our objections. At this point in time, the MEC highly encourages you to watch the JCE video tutorials and to take the 3-question quiz so that you are paid 1 TFP for the voluntary training. We also suggest that you brush up on your scheduling-related contractual rules because you can take nothing for granted in JCE until it has been proven.
Otherwise, there is one extremely important piece of information that we would like to highlight: JCE notifications.
JCE Notifications
When you log into JCE, you may notice one or more pop up notifications. These could range from advising you of a change to your report time to a reserve assignment. If you click through the notification, that is the equivalent of Crew Scheduling directly delivering the notice to you. In many ways, this could be a huge convenience for Flight Attendants as well as for Crew Scheduling. However, if you do not want to be “on the hook” for accepting the notification, you need to click the little “X” in the corner of the pop-up. Crew Scheduling will then be required to contact you the old fashioned way.
If you have general JCE-related questions or concerns, contact one of your local Scheduling Committee members (ANC: anc.scheduling@afaalaska.org, SEA: sea.scheduling@afaalaska.org, PDX: pdx.scheduling@afaalaska.org, LAX: lax.scheduling@afaalaska.org and SAN: san.scheduling@afaalaska.org. For reserve-specific questions or concerns, contact MEC Reserve Committee Chairperson Jarod McNeill at jarod.mcneill@afaalaska.org. During this challenging time be assured AFA will continue to advocate to management to do the right thing for our Flight Attendants. We’ll get through this together!
In Solidarity,
Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Linda Christou, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Tim Green, Brice McGee; MEC Scheduling Committee Chairperson Jake Jones; MEC Reserve Committee Chairperson Jarod McNeill; and MEC Grievance Committee Chairperson Stephanie Adams
