DFW UPDATE
3 January 2015
The APA Board of Directors has spent the last two days working on bringing this JCBA process to a conclusion. Given management’s demand that APA “accept” their proposal by 3 January, we fully expected that management would have the contract language intended to implement their demands ready for us to review and send to the membership. APA’s negotiating team has worked long hours through the Christmas/New Year holiday and we had a substantial portion of the contract language available to us.
However, the language that would implement the company’s demand that we allow them to combine International and Domestic divisions has not yet been finalized. Combining divisions is a complex and far reaching change that must be done properly to protect seniority rights and to ensure that pilots will have full access to the potential benefits of combined divisions. There is no way the membership can make a judgment on the impact of management’s plan to merge divisions without knowing the details of the language intended to govern that process. Management’s failure to have language ready to implement their own demand has made meeting their unilaterally imposed deadlines impossible to meet.
Following a long and complex process spread over two days, the APA Board approved a resolution accepting management’s proposal-in-principle, and agreeing to act to electronically ballot the membership. However, that process cannot begin until agreement is reached on the currently unfinished contract language. The Board committed itself to being bound by the vote of the membership when it occurs.
We understand that you have a LOT of questions and the story of the last two days is a tale worth hearing. We knew there was a possibility of an active voting process beginning this week, so we had pre-reserved the Grapevine Conventions Center for Monday (5 January) beginning at 1100.
Even though we do not yet have an active voting process, we feel it is still important to provide a forum to explain what took place over the last 2 days, to provide you as much detail as is available on the proposal, and to give you as much information as we have regarding the process going forward.
We understand this is short notice, but given how important this process is to all of you, we did not want to delay providing information first hand. Please join us at 1100 on Monday.
Captain Tom Westbrook First Officer Josey Wales
DFW Domicile Chairman DFW Vice Chairman
972-672-2676972-672-2676 Cell (972) 589-1812(972) 589-1812
dfw-chair@alliedpilots.org jwales@alliedpilots.org