July Labor Advisory Meeting 

The meeting was held at US Airways headquarters in Tempe.  The two board members, Herbert Baum and Bruce Lakefield participated via telephone.

The meeting began with follow-up items from the April meeting that we had.  Al Hemenway, VP-Labor relations reported on the following items:

Work brain- The Association reported that swaps that were turned in had been cancelled for an entire month in many locations; it appeared to be a programming error. Suzanne Boda, Senior VP of East coast Operations looked into this problem and found that the system will cancel swaps that are more then 8 weeks in advance.  This is not something that will be repaired from what we heard.  The company said that the employees are being advised of this issue and are being told not to turn in any swaps if they are more then 2 months into the future.

Uniform replacement-IAM and the IBT/CWA Association reported difficulties in getting uniform replacements due to wear and tear after the 18 month period.  The company did not have a final answer for us on this issue; it is still being looked into.

Negative vacation banks at the end of the year- the company agreed to work with the Association on this problem.  Employees were being asked to pay the full amount owed in one lump-sum payment.  The company has agreed to resolve this problem in a Letter of Agreement.   Employees can now set up a payment plan and pay it back in increments.

Last Chance agreements-the Association expressed concern that LCA's were being used to by-pass the grievance process.  Once a last chance agreement is signed, local management was using it to fire people regardless if it was related to the offense that caused the member to be on the last chance agreement.  The company has agreed that LCA's are not to be offered without input from Labor relations, so a local manager cannot use them to avoid the grievance process.  The agreements will cover either attendance or performance.  The new LCA's will be written with narrower language and will not encompass all violations.  An employee on an attendance LCA will now be allowed 2 occurrences before they are terminated if they are under an LCA.  Anyone on a LCA that has violated language in the agreement will be given the chance to have a meeting with Management and their Union rep. before a decision is made to terminate.  This would allow the grievant to provide any information/witnesses or mitigating circumstances to be considered by the local managers.

Level 3 hearings-we had reports that one of the labor relations hearing officers has been a no-show to the hearings or has been hostile to the member and the Union leadership.  We addressed this issue with the company when we were at the Association meeting in June and had a discussion about the issues with the hearing officer.  Al Hemenway assured us that we should not have any of the same problems we had in the past.

Travel while on leave of absence-West employees have been allowed to travel while on a leave of absence or OJI but the East employees have been restricted from this benefit.  Al Hemenway stated that there is a new policy on travel while out on leave.  This new policy now applies to all groups; all locations should have been advised of this change.  If you have not seen the new policy, please contact your local manager for details.

Doug Parker joined us after the follow-ups and did a company and industry review.  The performance in the 2nd quarter was strong and we finally saw a profit of $265 Million, which excludes $14 Million of special charges.  He thanked all of the employees and the representatives at the meeting for the hard work everyone did to achieve this profit and the triple play.  It was our second highest quarterly profit since the 2005 merger.  We accrued $18 million in profit sharing.  We will be getting our negotiated share of profit sharing for the first time in a long time.  He wants us to keep doing what we do best, which is to run a safe and reliable operation and take care of our customers.