The revenue looks robust but he said that we will see some economic downturn due to the oil prices going up. He expressed their desire to add more International flying. Scott Kirby added that they are working in PHL with the newly elected Mayor to see if they can get the gate space problem worked out in the International terminal.

The new EVP and COO, Robert Isom commented on his first 60 days on the job. He said it was a lot better then he thought it would be. His main focus is on improving performance, which has shown improvement recently , but , he said this has been bought through block time and good weather as Doug stated earlier. We will be facing the winter weather and we need to be prepared with the proper equipment and supplies to deal with deicing. We have been so focused on integration and not on the operation of the airline and this needs to be our main focus now. He is actively seeking a replacement for Anthony Mule and stated that we need leadership and direction when dealing with ground services, especially in PHL. He foresees changes in customer service leaders system wide. He reported that the consulting firm they have used recently reported that the agents morale was pretty low, many times because we never know when we are going to be forced to come in early, work on our days off or stay late , he stated he wants to try and fix this. He said we have to ask what kind of airline we want to be and get back to reliability, convenience and appearance of this airline to be competitive. As they develop the plans to achieve these goals they plan on getting input from all of the work groups and will set an employee feedback process in motion the first part of 2008.

I raised the under staffing issue once again in the ATO‘s, as we always do at these meetings, but this time, I asked for a meeting with the people who plan and estimate the staffing numbers for each location. The CWA leaders will be meeting in the near future with the staffing department heads to see if we can shed some light on why staffing and mandatory overtime is a major issue in the system. I was told that Donna Paladini is getting the statistics on the mandatory overtime usage and she has set up a conference call with the CWA-IBT reps on Tuesday November 20^th to review her findings. The AFA reps did speak on the staffing problems for the gate agents, giving examples they see day in and day out at the ATO’s and showed their support at the table to the CWA on this issue. We thanked the AFA for their input on our behalf.  I also raised the issue that Shift managers are usually gone by 6:00 PM each night and we never have any managers on duty in the mid-size and smaller stations when the operation is experiencing problems at night. 

The winter coat issue raised in the last meeting has been addressed and lists should be out right now on which locations will be able to order winter coats in time for the uniform switch over. Al Hemenway responded to the issue I raised last time about PT agents getting fewer uniform pieces, he said it is an expense the company is not willing to incur. I asked that they reconsider a portion of the cost for extra shirts for PT agents at least. He said he would look into it again with that in mind.

I again stated that the starting rate in RES is not attracting people to come work at US Airways and is not helping us retain agents either. The attrition rate is very high, people are leaving shortly after being trained to go work similar jobs in the area for $12 and $14 an hour. The company has the freedom, based on our negotiated language, to increase the starting wage to $9.59 in RES as they have in some of the major ATO locations. We encouraged them to seriously consider this option so we can retain the trained, experienced agents.