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Open Time Negotiations Begin

The AFA Negotiating Committee met with management November 14-17 this week in Portland to negotiate a new Open Time system. Representing Alaska Airlines management: Vice President of Inflight Services Andy Schneider, Managing Director of Labor Relations Elizabeth Ryan, Director of Inflight Crew Scheduling Kieran Whitney, Manager of Inflight Operations Performance Mike Link and Manager of Financial Planning & Analysis Brittany Schaub. Vice President of Labor Relations Greg Mays also made a guest appearance on Monday to kick off the week.

Under §12.F.9 [Exchange of Sequences: Open Time Trial] of our contract, AFA officially cancelled the Open Time trial in July. The contract provides that once the trial is cancelled, we will go “back to book”. “Back to book” means reverting to the Open Time system used in the 2006-2010 agreement and related 2010-2012 extension as modified by the “Withholding Open Time” arbitration award. You will find the language associated with “back to book” (BTB) Open Time in BTB §12.F [Exchange of Sequences Back to Book: Open Time Trading] of your contract. A copy of the “Withholding Open Time” arbitration award is also at the back of the contract.

Management is currently working on programming the old BTB OT system in the new Crew Exchange. As soon as programming is completed, we will go back to book. This is meant as a placeholder while the parties negotiate a new Open Time system.

The difficulty in negotiating any Open Time system is that management and Flight Attendants have interests that can be challenging to harmonize. From our survey and from our own experience, we know that Flight Attendants want more flexibility—whether to fly less or more, to get certain days off, or to improve the trips on their lines. Management wants to be able to run the operation without increasing its liability for uncovered flying, and to minimize premium pay, junior assignment and the potential for flight cancellations.

The week started out very collaboratively with both parties spending many hours crafting several different conceptual proposals. However, the Negotiating Committee became disheartened on Wednesday after management proposed changes to Open Time that in our opinion would be significantly worse for Flight Attendants than either the current system or the old system. There is no value in negotiating an Open Time agreement that would be worse than “back to book,” since “back to book” will apply if no new agreement is reached.

Consequently, we left the session disappointed.

The parties agreed to meet again on December 7-8 in Seattle. In the meantime, the Negotiating Committee will continue working on possible solutions. We welcome your thoughts and feedback at negotiations@afaalaska.org.

In Solidarity,

Your Negotiating Committee – MEC President Jeffrey Peterson, Kristy Stratton, Lisa Pinkston, Christina Frees and AFA Senior Staff Attorney Kimberley Chaput

Vacation Open Time Update – Saturday, November 5, 2016

Vacation Open Time trading re-opened on Wednesday, November 2nd and went reasonably well despite several unresolved glitches affecting some Flight Attendants who transferred bases in the past couple years. The Master Executive Council (MEC) sincerely thanks Inflight Crew Administration and the Info & Technology (IT) department—and AFA MEC Scheduling Chair Jake Jones—for making it work on that day.

That being said, the MEC recognizes that all these efforts after the fact neither make up for TFP lost due to wasted schedule adjustments, nor for restoring open vacation days, nor for lost opportunity for those who could not adjust their schedules to be available for trading on November 2nd.

At the request of your AFA leadership, MEC President Jeff Peterson sent the following email to Alaska Airlines Vice President of Inflight Services Andy Schneider:

Andy~

Due to the issues with Vacation Open Time trading in combination with all the other IT-related implementation challenges affecting flight attendants over the past couple years, AFA members and leadership are beyond frustrated. We strongly believe it is time for management to step up and address these frustrations in a much more concrete way than simply offering yet another apology.

Consequently, the Master Executive Council calls upon management to compensate every flight attendant with 4.0 TFP in recognition of these many inconveniences.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Peterson

President, Alaska Airlines Master Executive Council | Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO

Andy’s response:

Jeff and the MEC,

Your frustrations are fully justified in this situation. I know that you get inundated with calls when things like this go wrong. I am sure you have heard from FAs who took time off with the goal of trading for prime vacation days that have been inconvenienced.  And I know that the bidding date change was an inconvenience too.  I have fielded many questions and I share the frustrations. The difference is that your members look to you to hold us accountable for our errors.

Your first response has always been to work with us to address and solve the immediate issues.  I am grateful for your willingness to partner with us to find solutions and to help us troubleshoot and fix programming glitches and other errors. You know our systems much better than I do and your input is invaluable.  I know Jake was helping the programmers in the middle of the night last night so that things would run better today.  Thank you, Jake.

We honored any trade that went through on Monday and opened the trading today with the same number of slots that we had when we opened Monday. I had hoped that we could determine who was trying to bid on Monday to see if we could work schedules to get them time off for bidding today. Unfortunately there was no way to know who they were.

While I understand the goal of the “make whole” request, I can’t justify it.  As we work to update our technology and provide better tools for our Flight Attendants, we will inevitably have problems.  I have requested a detailed plan from our IT team to outline the steps they are taking to ensure issues are minimized and I will gladly share that with you and take your input.  No one needs the headaches that these errors cause and I know that [the IT department leaders] are committed to fix their processes.

Jeff, let’s discuss more at our tie in tomorrow.

Although the issue was discussed further at their standing tie-in meeting, nothing substantive came from that conversation.

Are you as frustrated as the MEC is with this response? Feel free to contact Andy directly and respectfully share your perspective. If you are sending an email, make sure to copy in your AFA Local Executive Council (LEC) leadership (e.g. anc@afaalaska.org, sea@afaalaska.org, pdx@afaalaska.org, lax@afaalaska.org or san@afaalaska.org).

Very disappointing!

In Solidarity,

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Satterlee, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Tim Green and Brice McGee

Open Time Negotiations Survey – Take 2

As reported a few weeks ago on afaalaska.org  (“Open Time Negotiations Survey Suspended Due to a Technical Problem”), the Open Time negotiations survey went offline because of an unforeseen glitch. Shortly thereafter the Master Executive Council (MEC) made the decision to leave the survey down in order to address membership feedback sent to leadership (“Update on Open Time Survey Suspension”). After much consideration AFA is re-posting the survey. Previously submitted surveys are on file, so it is not necessary to re-take the survey unless you wish to revise your responses.

About minimum flying and other undesirable options…

What was the feedback? Members expressed frustration with the last question in particular: “Some changes MAY be required in order to negotiate a better Open Time system. IF that becomes necessary, I would prefer to see them in the following order, with 1 being the change I would be most willing to accept and 8 being the change I would be least willing to accept.” Although there were several concerns, feedback was mostly centered on apprehensions that the survey seems to suggest a monthly minimum is a possibility.

A survey can be used as a communication tool to both membership and management in addition to being an informational tool for the Negotiating Committee and leadership. In this case, the reference to minimum flying in the survey was definitely not intended to communicate AFA’s desire to actually seek or even allow minimum flying. In fact, it was intended to do the exact opposite. Management tends to bring up minimum flying in every negotiation, so we wanted to have additional ‘ammunition’ to respond to such a proposal.

Be assured the entire MEC and the Negotiating Committee are adamantly opposed to a monthly minimum. We know changes to “the 480” were very controversial in this current contract, so we were (and are) highly confident the membership would rank any reference to minimum flying as dead last. It was unintentional and unfortunate that the survey would cause so much controversy. The survey was designed to simply determine priorities in a comprehensive list of possibilities that either the union or management might voluntarily address or be forced to address in one way or another.

The MEC and the Negotiating Committee will go so far as to say that we’re encouraging you to take (or re-take) the survey and rank “minimum flying” last on the list. We will also tell you that we fully understand you do not wish to accept any of the items on the list in that last question, and we will proceed with crafting our opening proposal accordingly. If you are opposed to answering the last question altogether, then you have the ability to completely skip it (just don’t fill in any of the bubbles). There is also a “free form” comments field at the end of the survey if you would like to provide additional feedback.

Take 2

*** Note: Previously submitted surveys are on file, so it is not necessary to re-take the survey unless you wish to revise your responses. ***

Pursuant to AFA Alaska Collective Bargaining Agreement §12.F.9.b. [Exchange of Sequences: Open Time Trial], AFA and Alaska Airlines management will begin negotiations on a successor Open Time system due to cancellation of the Open Time Trial. AFA is surveying the membership regarding Open Time in order to guide the Negotiating Committee in writing our opening proposal for negotiating a new Open Time system.

Your candid responses are appreciated.

You must enter your Arctic number in order to take the survey. We’re asking for your Arctic number to ensure each Flight Attendant receives one vote and is not for tracking purposes. If a survey is submitted more than once with the same Arctic number, only the last response will be counted.

If you have any creative solutions or ideas regarding Open Time, please share them in the free form comments field at the end of the survey.

The Master Executive Council (MEC) knows that many of you are tired of taking surveys about Open Time, but this is a different survey than the satisfaction surveys that went out during the Open Time Trial. Now that the MEC has canceled the trial, it is extremely important that every Flight Attendant take this negotiations survey. AFA very much wants every voice to be counted regarding a new Open Time system.

>>> To take the Open Time Negotiations Survey click here. <<<

The survey will close at noon Pacific Time on Friday, October 7th.

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

In Solidarity,

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Satterlee, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Tim Green and Brice McGee

Your Negotiating Committee – MEC President Jeffrey Peterson, Kristy Stratton, Lisa Pinkston, Christina Frees and AFA Senior Staff Attorney Kimberley Chaput

Open Time Negotiations Survey Suspended Due to a Technical Problem

The Open Time negotiations survey is currently inaccessible due to a technical problem. The Master Executive Council (MEC) believes the problem is most likely due to the survey being inadvertently set to close at an incorrect date and time.

Unfortunately, it appears there may be only one person at AFA International who effectively can assist in troubleshooting the issue and that person is on vacation through the weekend.

Consequently, we are officially suspending the survey until further notice. Stay tuned for developments on this issue by early next week if not before.

AFA sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience.

In Solidarity,

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Satterlee, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Tim Green and Brice McGee

Your Negotiating Committee – MEC President Jeffrey Peterson, Kristy Stratton, Lisa Pinkston, Christina Fees and AFA Senior Staff Attorney Kimberley Chaput

Open Time Trial Cancellation

The Master Executive Council (MEC) has surveyed Flight Attendants’ satisfaction with Open Time for several months (May, June and July), and it is very clear from the survey results that the new system is strongly disfavored. (See “Open Time Trial Survey Results – July 2016” for the latest results.) In our opinion, dissatisfaction with Open Time has been made worse by the disappointing programming challenges leading up to full implementation of the new system combined with the continuing connectivity problems in eMaestro.

Consequently, the MEC has notified management that we are cancelling the Open Time Trial pursuant to CBA §12.F.9 [Exchange of Sequences: Open Time Trial: Cancellation of Open Time Trial].

As outlined in §12.F.9.a., Open Time will revert “back to book,” which was the system in place in the 2006-2010 contract as modified by the “Withholding Open Time” arbitration award (AFA No. 6-99-2-18-11 [“Withholding Open Time”]). The roll back will occur when Jeppesen is able to program the new Jeppesen Crew Tracking Enterprise (JCTE) Crew Exchange with the old Open Time trading rules.

Management’s estimate for going “back to book” is sometime between February and July 2017. We are anticipating a specific estimate from management in the near future. In the meantime, Open Time trading will remain under the new system.

Based on overwhelming feedback from the members, the MEC is requesting that we begin negotiations on a successor Open Time system as soon as possible. Negotiations will proceed with your current Negotiating Committee: MEC President Jeffrey Peterson, Kristy Stratton, Lisa Pinkston and Christina Frees. The MEC sincerely thanks Jake Jones for his service on the past two Negotiating Committees. Jake recused himself from the committee. AFA Senior Staff Attorney Kimberley Chaput will join the committee for Open Time negotiations.

Keep in mind the recently selected Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) is a different committee that will negotiate a combined contract pursuant to the Alaska Airlines-Virgin America merger.

“It’s painfully obvious the Open Time Trial is not working for the Membership,” said MEC President Jeff Peterson. “Let’s keep in mind this new system was always designed as a trial, which is why the parties agreed to an ‘opt out’ clause. The MEC sincerely thanks everyone for taking part in the surveys and sharing their comments, which has given us a lot of material for upcoming negotiations. Flight Attendants want a simplified system without all the confusing codes and a much-improved ability to trade day-for-day or greater that is not necessarily tied to day-of-departure. AFA is committed to delivering a workable Open Time system to our Flight Attendants that is supported by a comfortable majority of our group.”

You will be hearing a lot more about Open Time in the coming months as negotiations progress.

If you have any questions or concerns, contact your Local Executive Council (LEC) president.

In Solidarity,

Your MEC – Jeffrey Peterson, Brian Palmer, Yvette Satterlee, Lisa Pinkston, Laura Masserant, Cathy Gwynn, Tim Green and Brice McGee

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