September 23, 2016
Sisters and Brothers,
Both the Fleet Service and Mechanic and Related/Stores negotiating committees met this week in Washington, DC. The week began with each committee meeting with company representatives to discuss outstanding articles and continue to exchange proposals.
The M&R/Stores committee exchanged proposals on Overtime and Rebids and have further narrowed our position for each article. The company has yet to respond to our proposals regarding Vacations, Holidays and Limited Duty.
The Fleet committee received the company’s counter proposals on Part Time, Temporary Assignments and Vacations. The Temporary Assignments article has been narrowed down to two issues. Some issues regarding Part Time and Vacation provisions were resolved, but fell short of meeting the memberships’ needs. We also finalized our counter proposals regarding Overtime and Vacations.
On Wednesday, the company presented the Association with a Power Point presentation for Fleet Service cross-utilization that they previously shared with their leadership team. The company’s presentation exceeded the cross-utilization of L-US and L-AA employees that is permitted in our recent pay adjustment agreement. Their plan, as presented, undermines our existing seniority system and contracts, and attempts to prematurely achieve the efficiencies that can only come from joint collective bargaining agreements.
Your representatives made it clear to the company that this is unacceptable. The company has requested to meet with the Association committees early next week to continue dialogue in an effort to resolve these issues.
The Association committees stand shoulder to shoulder and will not tolerate the company unilaterally making changes to existing agreements.
Fraternally,
Mark Baskett, Mike Fairbanks, Pete Hogan,
Tim Hughes, Steve Miller, Brian Oyer,
Pat Rezler, Art Risley, Andre Sutton,
Rodney Walker, Bill Wilson, Tim Murphy
Mechanic and Related/Stores Committee:
Jason Best, Mike Bush, Ken Coley,
John Coveny, Dale Danker, Mark Huffman,
Bennie Martino, Gary Peterson, Larry Pike,
Sean Ryan, Jay Sleeman, Mark Strength