Upcoming Customer experience audits
November 19, 2009
IBT/CWA Passenger service association

        

"CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AUDITS" 

The leadership of the IBT/CWA Association had an informational meeting with US Airways and the people that are designing and will be performing the audit.  They are planning on rolling this out sometime early in January of 2010.  The Association was adamant when we advised the company that there should be NO DISCIPLINE issued due to the outcome of the audits.  We were assured by the company that the audit was "not meant to be punitive"  If the auditors observe  "gross misconduct" they will advise local management.  Please  let your local CWA leadership know if there are any negative repercussions associated with the performance of the audits in your city.

Pittsburgh could foreshadow future of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport

By Alison Grant, The Plain Dealer November 22, 2009, 12:53AM

PITTSBURGH, Pa -- As Clevelanders worry about the future of their airport, they might find lessons 100 miles east in Pittsburgh.

Many Northeast Ohio leaders are concerned that renewed talk of merging Continental and United airlines could lead to the loss of flights and bragging rights that come with being a hub airport for Continental. click here to read article.

Big Breakthrough: NMB Proposes Majority Vote for Airline Worker Elections

The National Mediation Board this week proposed a rule change to bring real democracy to union elections in the airline and railroad industries.

Under the NMB proposal, workers would vote either "Yes" or "No" in a union representation election. The outcome would be determined by a majority of votes cast, just as elections for public office now are conducted.

Under the current NMB rules, workers can only win union representation if a majority of eligible workers vote and a majority of those voters want a union voice. Workers who don't participate are considered "No" votes.  

The NMB's two-member majority called the current system undemocratic. "Few if any democratic elections are conducted in this manner," the NMB said. "In our society, free choice is expressed on the basis of a majority of valid votes cast in an election. The wishes of those who take the time and trouble to cast ballots" should not be superseded by those who chose not to participate, it added.

The current system has encouraged airlines to engage in intimidation and coercive tactics to suppress turnout and keep workers from exercising their right to vote during union elections.

The rule change was praised by AFA-CWA President Patricia Friend. Employees seeking a union will now have the opportunity to have a chance for truly fair elections," Friend said. "They are excited for the opportunity for their voices and votes to be counted."

AFA-CWA has been working with flight attendants at the merged Northwest Delta Airlines to help bring union representation to the airline's 21,000 flight attendants. "Now that the NMB has announced that, for the first time in recent years, airline employees seeking union representation will have a chance for truly fair elections, flight attendants at Northwest and Delta are excited for that opportunity," Friend said. "As the largest private sector union election this year, we want this election at Delta Air Lines to occur under the new democratic procedures and therefore are withdrawing our single transportation application" that would trigger a union election. The NMB will issue its final rule after a 60-day public comment period.

For more information-also check out www.nmb.gov  and  http://www.apsa6001.org/  the new Local 6001 website for American Airlines Agents seeking union representation on the job.

PAYROLL ERRORS

Please be sure to review your paycheck carefully each pay period.  There have been numerous errors by payroll; either overpayments or underpayments.  Be aware of your rate of pay and any premuims you should be getting.  If you find an error, please let your local Admin/payroll clerk know of the mistake ASAP.  If you are unable to get it fixed, please reach out to your local CWA shop steward for help.

 

 CWA NEWS

11/24/2009

CWA Passenger Service Association

ATTENTION US Airways RETIREES;

Important messages about enrollment, your benefit plans,  or US Airways announcements Individuals Turning 65 in 2009 Individuals turning 65 in 2009 will receive an information packet on the Medicare Options US benefit plans approximately 90 days prior to your 65th birthday. This packet will include an enrollment application, which will need to be completed by the individual turning 65, for the plans being elected. If you would like to receive information earlier or if you have any questions you can call the US Airways Retiree Service Center at 1-888-287-4101. Click here to link to the web site  or  www.Medicareoptionsus.com ~CWA Member Info~  Mandatory overtime rules being abused by the company systemwide in the Airports! If you have not been given 1 hour written or electronic notice and the reason and duration of the mandatory overtime, then the company is in violation of the Contract -File a grievance if this happens to you!  If you are not in front of a computer for the electronic pop up regarding overtime, how are you to know you have been mandatoried?   YOU DO NOT have to find a manager before the end of your shift to "find out" if they need you to stay., the contract is very clear, they are to notify YOU.    It is the RESPONSIBILITY of local managers to MANAGE the coverage, not ours.  The company has been told many times the staffing is not adequate even when we had the SABRE system, they are finding out the hard way.    See pages 34 and 40  in your contract to review the Mandatory overtime rule. For ATO's Article 6 Item U. and for RES Article 7, Item L. BREAKS! Take your breaks as scheduled.  It is your right to take them per the contract.  Do not let the local managers intimidate you nor make you feel guilty for leaving your co-workers to handle the lines when you need a break.  Stand up for your negotiated rights. A note about Training and Testing. DO NOT DO TRAINING or TESTING ON YOUR OWN TIME  or AT HOME!  The company is responsibe for allowing enough time for training and testing while on the job! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Training on your days off The CWA locals are getting calls from members that are being forced to attend training on their days off.  If you are not given a choice of days to go to training, please let your local rep know (see Article 29-Training, Travel Pay and Meal Per Diem on page 108 of your contract).  If you volunteer to train on your days off or those are the only days left to sign up after bidding, you must be given two days off that same work week.  Keep in mind, we do not get overtime during training.    GREAT SEARCH TOOL TO HELP YOU FIND WHAT YOU ARE SEEKING IN THE CWA CONTRACT PDF FILE LINK A helpful search tool you can use if you are accessing the link to our Contract online is the binocular feature.  Just click on the cwa contract pdf file link to left, it may take a minute to load, then on the binocular icon, a search tool will open up to the right.  Type in a keyword, such as mandatory overtime or swap and it will link you to any page that has those words on it.  You also may want to save the Contract pdf file to your desktop to use when you are not online.  Hope this helps you navigate our CWA/IBT contract! GRIEVANCES-ARTICLE 25 Please be sure to review Article 25 and the time limits for each step to keep a grievance in the pipeline and active. We also have a link to the grievance form to the left, which you can print out and use.  If you do not have a steward available and need to file a grievance in a timely manner, please contact your local for assistance, there is a link to their emails below.  We do not want people to miss a time limit to file a grievance or appeal it to the next step. It is the employee/grievant's responsibility to advance the grievance to the next step once they get the oral reply  or written response at each level.  Please keep your steward and or local in the loop in case the company fails to copy the steward or local in on their response to your grievance. Always remember to list a REMEDY on your grievance, which is what you would like if you win the grievance, for example, to be allowed to work the overtime you were bypassed for.

January update
January 25, 2010
IBT/CWA Association

COMMITTEE MEMBERS; W. Douglas Parker, Chairman,

Herbert M. Baum, Bruce R. Lakefield

Report of the US Airways labor advisory Board of directors meeting January 20, 2010-Phoenix, AZ   Doug Parker, CEO, began the meeting by stating that we made it through a difficult couple of years and it is a tribute to the people each union represents in the different work groups at the meeting. We have experienced loses in 2008 and 2009-approx. 1.4 billion, he would have thought we would have filed bankruptcy. We avoided bankruptcy due to support from partners, people pitching in and loaning us money. The partners saw what a good job we were doing running an airline. We narrowly averted bankruptcy-which would have led to liquidation. The good news is we are improving, collecting over 500 million in ancillary revenues due to bag fees.. We are running a good operation. Our focus is on D-0. We are saving money by reducing the number of aircraft and closing bases, we have eliminated our least profitable routes. In operations we have done an exceptional job of turning around the performance. We are second in on time performance. Parker did say that we did not run a good operation in December. The week of Christmas we bumped up schedules. That was a bad decision. We did not predict the storms on the east coast, the flood in the DCA terminal, security issues and not enough crews. To better benefit the customers, we pre-cancelled flights and notified customers 2-3 days in advance. We had 100 cancellations a day on average during this period. The call volume in reservations forced mandatory overtime, which historically, we have never had to do. We asked crews to pick up more trips as well. Robert Isom explained that due to the weather issues and the crew short falls in December, they are working on getting netter weather programs, better crew schedules-with more input from the Unions and make a better plan in the future to make sure we have the best models in place. He holds management accountable. None of this was out of line historically; we just did not factor in some of the bad things. We would not have flexed up the schedule like we did. We can make excuses of why it happened, but it is because of what we did to our people, not what our people did and we are very sorry and thankful for the hard work of everyone in the field. Scott Kirby described the revenue outlook, stating our corporate travel was up 5% in November and up 10% in December. They expect to spend 450 million more on fuel in 2010. That can change in a hurry -we have stronger business traffic and pricing is much stronger, about 8 - 9% and we hope it will continue in 2010. Mesa update-Scott Kirby stated that the fact they filed Bankruptcy should have no effect on us in the near future. Due to the bankruptcy filing Mesa is having more oversight by the FAA to be sure they are running a safe airline. Our contract with them ends in 2012. This may give us potential to negotiate better terms in the future. The IBT/CWA Association raised many issues during the meeting; expressing how December was horrible for our members. They did do a great job under the circumstances. We were disappointed that Kerry Hester was not present in the meeting because we wanted to ask her some tough questions. The call centers never had to deal with this type of mess. We advised Doug Parker and the Board of Director members that they may want to evaluate who they have in charge of reservations. What was so tough about December of 2009? Our members were forced to work 16 hour days, 3 days in a row in Reservations. Many had child care issues, pets were not cared for and some people did not have medication at work they needed to take. Hotel rooms were not offered, even though the Winston-Salem area had 5 - 10 inches of snow and one of the worse storms in history. Many of the members did not get 8 hours rest due to the terrible road conditions. Taking 16 hours of phone calls from very upset customers was very trying and the agents were exhausted physically and mentally.  We read some of the letters from members that wrote about their experiences and gave copies to Doug Parker and the Board members. The fact there was such excessive advance VTO given out was also an issue and we feel, was  part of the reason so much mandatory overtime was needed.  This was very poor planning and management seemed to ignore historical data. Al Hemenway, stated that management has never really had to deal with mandatory overtime in Reservations to this extreme and we can learn from this experience. Local Management needs to have a better understanding of the CBA and apply it fairly. The company is working with the Association so we don't have a repeat of what happened in December 2009 when utilizing mandatory overtime. Robert Isom also stated that we don't have the same outlets for Reservations since we are working on in sourcing the reservations work from Manila, due to the agreement in the CBA. We are working on tools that would allow passengers to rebook on the web; we should have some of this in place by the summer. Doug Parker said we could have done better. The problem is- you take some amount of risk and we took too much risk and flexed it out. The assumptions changed, storms and crew shortages all had enormous impact on our agents and we will do all we can to keep it from happening again. We are very sorry for what took place and the effect it had on our employees. Al Hemenway stated that we don't want to violate the CBA and want to review it. We raised the workbrain issues, particularly the TPA ATO issues. 80% of the agents there are in levels, many because of 'no-clocks" that management is refusing to review and correct. They are being told that Camille Soto is not allowing management to correct any errors. There is one 39 year agent who has never been in a level that is now on a level 2 for 3 no - clocks, even though he is the first agent in on the counter and is the one to hand out the bags. We reviewed a major problem with the reissue of passenger tickets when they are re-routed to another city. If the customer does not have a CLT coupon and are diverted to CLT the agents there have to call the help desk to re book and reissue the tickets for each customer. This is very time consuming and costing the company much in labor since many of the agents are being forced into mandatory overtime to do this work. Suzanne Boda is looking into this and will get back to us on when this may be fixed. We asked why some locations cannot have winter coats during this bitter cold period. We mentioned BUF, the agents on the curb can have parkas but the folks on the gates are not allowed to have them, they still must use the all-weather coats. We asked management to look into this. The Association stated that the Company's staffing model is "fine" if all things run as planned, but if one glitch happens in the operation then we have a mess on our hands and mandatory overtime is utilized to compensate for understaffing. The 10 minute door close rule is almost impossible to meet in many locations due to the one-agent per gate model and the amount of bags people are checking at the gate now. The reply we got was simply that the company is working on the streamlined boarding process which should help. The overall morale of the members in general is very poor and we asked that the company consider giving extra SA1's or enter everyone's name that worked during this time in the  "above and beyond" drawings they have each quarter.

T'was the Nightmare

before Christmas

when it started to snow!

My dear Brothers and Sisters,

When the Mandatory Overtime letter was posted from Kerry, I was not worried; I knew this would never happen. Not in Reservations, we knew we would never be mando'd! We weren't even mando'd during 9/11!  Well, we may have thought we were ready for the first big snow, but the amount of snow that fell was more than expected and we weren't ready.

Snow crippled the east coast from the Carolinas to Maine. Then it happened, We Were Mando'd!  I was devastated witnessing the human suffering you experienced during this storm. Sleep deprivation is what they do to prisoners, right? 16 hours on and 8 off, when some of you had 2 plus hours to try to get home to just turn around and return to work with only a couple of hours sleep. On the 3rd consecutive day of this torture, you were giddy, couldn't think clearly and you became delirious.

I applaud your diligence in achieving a difficult task. I called HR numerous times during this ordeal to try to get a resolve and we are going to be talking about the implementation of Overtime before the next crisis arises.

On a brighter note, January 1, 2010 we will receive our 4% pay increase and for those of you not topped out, you will also receive your yearly pay increase which will be given on your pay date anniversary. 

Happy New Year to you and your families and may 2010 be prosperous for us all.

Vonda Hardy

President

CWA Local 3640

from;  www.cwalocal3640.com

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