Comments

1. Donna Paschen says

   November 25, 2021 at 13:29

   What is happening with increased service? It seems crazy to me that we are rushing to pre pandemic levels when break thru cases are affecting us. The hospital’s are filling up again. I don’t want to be in the aisle anymore than I have to. Passengers don’t need to be standing in bathroom lines. We are all burned out and tired of fighting the mask war. Adding unnecessary service exasperates the situation.

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 25, 2021 at 13:59

     💯 We’ve been saying this to management pretty much the entire year. We’ve been successful in convincing management to mitigate some of the additions and delay others, but not all. The craziest one of the moment is the choice of three snacks. Management wants our “guests” to party like it’s 1999; meanwhile, a pandemic rages on. So infuriating! 🤬

     Management continues to cite that maintaining or improving customer satisfaction scores is of paramount importance and represents a threat to the Company’s competitive advantage and ultimately results in lost revenue if those scores dip. Separately, the Company’s infectious disease Drs. from the UW continue to say that the service offerings do not translate to quantifiable increased risk to flight attendants. The Inflight COVID+ rates also continue to be significantly below the national average on a population adjusted basis, so the data doesn’t validate that onboard transmission is happening in any significant numbers. The UW docs keep saying FAs have a greater chance of contracting COVID from each other while in the gallies with masks off when we’re eating or while on a layover as compared to from passengers during service. 🙄

     I’m not agreeing with any of this–just reporting what is being said in various meetings.

     Well continue to push back at every opportunity.

   • Erin says

     November 25, 2021 at 22:32

     Hey, I SO appreciate this new communication style! It will be helpful to get info on these continuing issues. I am not understanding, though, why no change happens when you share concerns with the company about the outrageously overboard service situations we are put in every day. (75+ meals? It took an hour!) Why isn’t this considered top priority to change this? I typically don’t feel whiny about things at Alaska because I love my job and, while flying, like to stay busy but there are real, solid concerns here that I don’t feel your answer really addressed. What is the next step? What can we do to be taken more seriously?
     Thank you so much for all you do. We are very lucky indeed to have leadership like you rooting for change!

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 25, 2021 at 22:51

     Thank you, Erin, and Happy Thanksgiving to you!

     Excellent question about service. I’m just about to go to bed, but I’ll tackle this during the light of day tomorrow.

     Have a good night!

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 26, 2021 at 14:09

     Erin~ I hope you saw the good news about management agreeing to suspend the choice of three snacks in the main cabin for the next six months. This is a fine example of what can be accomplished when we’re all pulling together. I am firmly convinced that the outcry from the line (the emails, phone calls and direct conversations) is what finally convinced management to relent for now.

     I had a fairly comprehensive response almost finished and was nearly ready to push “reply” when I accidentally either refreshed my browser or backspaced. Whatever I did, I lost the response. 🤬 Unfortunately, I don’t have time to reconstruct it right now, so I will have to round this out later–no later than tomorrow. I apologize for the inadvertent technology fail, and thank you for your patience!

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 27, 2021 at 14:01

     [Continuing the response from yesterday…]

     I’ll assume you were referring to AFA when you wrote, “Why isn’t this considered top priority to change this?” You also specifically mentioned 75+ meals on a flight in addition to the more general concern about outrageously overboard service situations; I’ll also assume you are asking about the latter rather than about capping the number of meals on a flight. Let me know if I misunderstood.

     Adding more to service during a pandemic is a top concern and priority for AFA. Members of MEC leadership, the Inflight Service Committee (ISC) and the Air Safety-Health-Security Committee (ASHSC) spent many hours in meetings with management discussing our concerns about service changes in the months up to the November 4th change. Our November 3rd Special Update was dedicated to this topic alone.

     These conversations in which AFA advocates on behalf of FAs go on all the time, but we don’t do a good enough job of communicating those efforts to Membership. That is why we are changing our communication strategy so you see the fight unfolding more in real time rather than a mere mention summarized in a later membership update–if at all. For instance, the current battle is over management wanting to add something else in December that we were able to talk them out of for the November 4th changes.

     One of the other challenges is that due to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), quite often AFA can’t warn membership of coming service changes until they are publicly announced. At that point it is too late, and we have to deal with it defensively. Unfortunately, NDAs are a common pre-condition of information sharing between management and the union with regard to pretty much anything to do with money or marketing when it is not publicly known. No way around that because if we didn’t agree to the NDAs, then management just wouldn’t share that information with us any longer.

     With the UW infectious disease doctors concluding that the additional service offerings come with an acceptable level of risk of transmission to FAs, it takes out a major component of our leverage: safety. I know that most FAs perceive the increased service as leading to increased risk of exposure to COVID-19–and AFA leadership agrees. However, management is not inclined to prioritize FAs’ perception of risk over medical experts.

     Given all that, you asked what we can do to be taken more seriously. From a safety perspective, probably nothing in this specific instance. If circumstances significantly change then I would hope the UW docs would have a different conclusion about risk. Right now, they are saying FAs are at a much higher risk of contracting COVID while eating in the galleys or while socializing on layovers than we do in the cabin during service. Realistically we have to approach this as a FA perception issue: all-time low morale, perception that all the service leads to increased risk, the FAs are exhausted and need some relief, etc.

     What is the next step? For now, report everything! As we wrote in the November 3rd Special Update:

     “[I]t is critically important that any safety hazards related to the expanded service be documented in ReportIt! as a Flight Attendant Irregularity Report (FAIR). If you encounter any issues related to onboard products, catering supply levels, or procedural concerns, please report them through the Catering Issues function in Block2Block. Data provided through your reporting helps to strengthen the voice of our Inflight Service Committee and ASHSC in their conversations with management about onboard service.”

     Now that we have achieved some momentum with management’s decision to temporarily reduce the choice of three snack to two in the main cabin, I will chat with the MEC this coming week during our weekly update about other potential next steps. FAs are already taking the initiative to email management about their general frustrations, so maybe it’s time for an official letter writing campaign once we identify a specific objective. It’s not likely to be productive if we try to fight the entire service. We could advocate to return to pre-November 4th service levels, but that wouldn’t affect the potential number of meals as that cap was removed a while ago–it’s just that planes are full again, so the number of pre-ordered meals have increased accordingly.

     More to come I’m sure!

   • SG says

     November 28, 2021 at 18:57

     Dear Jeff,
     I find the company response that Dr advisors say we are at greater risk of contracting Covid while eating in the galley or socializing on layovers, vs extended cabin service, and therefore the risk of transmission during said cabin service is acceptable- is a false equivalency and disingenuous argument. It seems highly unlikely that engaging hundreds of eating and drinking people, over the course of many hours in a day, would be less risky than exposure to one or two (crew) people for 10 to 15 minutes. Also, crew members may or may not eat at the same time, or close together, or at all. But even IF this silly risk comparison were true- should the goal of the company be to REDUCE FA’s risk of exposure? Or to conjure ridiculous rationalizations to INCREASE FA’s level of exposure?
     The company response effectively says- WE ARE COMFORTABLE INCREASING YOUR LEVEL OF EXPOSURE TO COVID FROM PAX, BECAUSE OTHER POTENTIAL RISKS ALSO EXIST. It really is a nonsensical, bad faith response, and I find the layover comment even more embarrassing.
     Thanks for your hard work!

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 29, 2021 at 20:50

     Just FYI, I participated in a video call in which I heard this from one of the doctors directly, so management did not exaggerate the report. Regardless, I agree that management’s decision about how to apply that information is unacceptable.

   • Tracey Withrow says

     November 28, 2021 at 11:48

     I’m reading your reply that includes info about “the company’s infectious disease doctors.” What about OUR infectious disease drs? Does AFA look for and hire drs that offer the other side of the story? Even lawyers do that in a lawsuit. Just curious. I’d LOVE to see information about what AFA is doing… not just what the company says and we deal with.

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 29, 2021 at 20:36

     Tracey~ I apologize for not responding to your post yet. I will definitely get back to you tomorrow.

   • Jeffrey Peterson (MEC President) says

     November 30, 2021 at 11:30

     Honestly Tracey, AFA Alaska does not have the budget to hire infectious disease doctors as subject matter experts–even in the best of times. The MEC budget is based on the number of projected active members at time the budget is constructed, and we get only adjustment to budget fairly late in the budget year. This year’s budget is extremely reduced from normal because it was based on the number of active members at a time when many FAs were out on EVFs and wouldn’t have been considered active.

     It is true that subject matter experts are often hired in lawsuits to represent both sides of an issue, but that is also one component of why litigation is so expensive. Regardless, I don’t see the relevance of comparing a trial to a management-labor interaction that also falls squarely within management’s rights.

     Let’s just say for argument’s sake that we did hire doctors to represent our viewpoint. What would that accomplish? Their doctors would disagree with our doctors, and management could still choose to implement the service changes. Now we’ve spent a lot of money to accomplish the same outcome.

     Am I missing something?

     In the November 3rd Special Update, we touched on all the work that was done prior to the service changes:

     During the lead up to the upcoming changes, members of our Inflight Service Committee and Air Safety, Health, & Security Committee (ASHSC) as well as several MEC Officers have been engaged with management to assess the changes for safety concerns and other potential impacts to Flight Attendants. Your AFA representatives spent hours upon hours in meetings with management bringing forward numerous issues related to safety, health, operational and procedural challenges, and other concerns shared by Flight Attendants.

     Realistically, it is not possible to detail all of those conversations after the fact, so that is why we’re trying to move to more “in the moment” updates so members get a better sense of our efforts on a daily basis.