F/A Contract Suggestions?

[kirkpatrick]

Really? If I wake up sick and I am still feeling like crap at 10a I pretty much guess the rest of the day will not be much different.

But you're a day early here. If you feel like crap at 10am how will you feel tomorrow night at sign-in time? By 4pm today you may know you're on the mend; 10am may be a bit early to tell.

MK

 

[Garfield1966]

I'll take your word for it but the sick list seems to indicate that you are in the minority.

 

[Skymess]

I'll take your word for it but the sick list seems to indicate that you are in the minority.

Oh shut up and drop some of those hidden trips you're holding onto in IOR's open time on the 10th!!!!!

 

[Garfield1966]

Oh shut up and drop some of those hidden trips you're holding onto in IOR's open time on the 10th!!!!!

Actually, if you will check Ebay on the 6th you may place your bids. I need to make some of that money I lost back. Bid often and bid high.

 

[AC AA LA FA]

the company has wanted a earlier SK clear time for years....
It has value to the f/as at 1600, so the question is whats the company willing to offer in exchange..?

 

[Garfield1966]

the company has wanted a earlier SK clear time for years....
It has value to the f/as at 1600, so the question is whats the company willing to offer in exchange..?

Value? What would that value be? As stated above, it would seem to benefit more FA's to have the sick list clear earlier. What is going to end up happening is that AVBL will end up shrinking to a very small amount and RSV will end up increasing to take up the slack.

There is not contractual language requiring that AVBL be offered, only how it is governed IF it is offered.

We can make the system work regardless of what time the sick list opens. It will be of more benefit to all if it opens earlier. As Skymess pointed out, the folks making the decisions do not have to live with them. FA's and Crew skd does.

 

[jimntx]

Jim,

I agree with you on most things, especially TTOT being open until the day before.

As for the 35 hour threshold, I think you should have the flexibility to fly as little or as much as you want. If you want to drop it all then you should be able to keep your travel priviliges. I DON'T think that you should expect to have medical if you only fly 35 hours a month. That privilege is being funded by the full time flight attendants on the line. It's great that those people don't have to come to work but unrealistic to think that you can retain full medical coverage for part time work indefinitely, especially in the cost cutting environment we currently find ourselves in. The pie is only so big. I think it is enough of a privilege to retain your job and travel benefits for flying nothing.

You and I will have to respectfully agree to disagree about the issue of flight attendants who never fly. Not just medical, there should be NO benefits period for someone who doesn't come to work--unless they are on a valid leave as I specified in my original post. You should have heard me trying to explain to my brother-in-law who is an executive with a major electricity generating company about employees who never come to work, but can not be forced to quit, retire or be fired.

Do you think that non-rev travel benefits cost the company nothing? Especially since these people retain not only their own travel benefits, but the other D2 and D3 benefits as well.

Do you think there is no cost to the company (or the union) for that matter to keep that place held even though that person never shows up to work?

What about the cost to the company and the union of junior f/as who quit because they feel like they will never be able to hold anything decent?

What about the flight attendants at bases like DFW and ORD who are still on reserve after 20 years because of all the dead weight above them that prevents recalling furloughees or hiring new f/as? If you look at the flying assigned to those bases vs. the "active" base roster, they are overstaffed. If you look at the flying assigned to those bases vs. the number of f/as willing to work on airplanes that have passengers on them, I would bet they are understaffed.

My suggestions:

Reserve:
Have a few high time reserve lines with a 90 hour guarantee, a few low time reserve lines with a 50 hour guarantee, and keep the rest of the reserve lines regular lines. That way, those who want to fly will be utilized and those who don't won't have to be the company's bi*ch for the entire month.

Reserve TTOT: Allow us to trade like trips for like trips with other fa's during the ENTIRE year. If you have a 3 day you should be able to trade with another FA for a 3 day.

(A friend of mine came up with this). Allow reserves to HIPLOT the trips in open time for one hour prior to assigning the sequences. If they assign you trips at 7 then allow us to assign our own trip from 6-7. Most of the trips would probably fly out of open time and they wouldn't have to worry about as many sick calls. They may eliminate sick calls this way by allowing us to get our own trips.

Allow flight attendants access to the actual list of who is above you so you could really see where you are in line for a trip. That HI25 is pure and utter crap.

Sick clearance time:
Move it up to 12pm. Allow avbl from 5am-12, make up can then begin at 12 noon and then process reserves at 4 or 5pm.


Bid Closing Time:
Close bidding on the 15th of the month so your schedule is out by the 18th for the next month.

TTOT

Allow trip trading with open time up until noon the day before your trip.

If you have time on your schedule you should be allowed to pluck trips out of open time without having a trip to trade or AVBL days.

AVBL:
Eliminate the preplotting max or make it 90 like it is on TTOT.

Most of these I agree with, but have a slightly different viewpoint.

1. First off, Open time should be first come, first served, period, full stop, end of discussion. Who cares if some senior momma drops all her trips then parks on the MU list in case something comes available she might want to fly, or she has requested a particular trip? You want to fly a trip? Then get up at 5am like everyone else and see what's available. And, if a better trip drops in later, you should be allowed to trade your trip for it. Again, I fail to see what difference it makes and why the company should even care who flies the trip as long as someone flies the trip. If it is still in Open Time at 7pm, assign it to a reserve. Problem solved.
2. Manpower planning would have to do a better job. Perfect example: Thanksgiving Day, there were 7 Ready Reserves at SLT. The day after there were about 20. The Monday following Thanksgiving (which was rather a dead day at SLT, I don't know about the rest of the system), there were 30 ready reserves after all trips had been assigned. From 7pm Sunday until 7pm Monday, they used 4 of those 30 reserves. I ended up with 65 hours on Reserve in November. I heard, can't confirm just yet, that there were some Reserves at SLT that ended the month with less than 30 hours.
3. MU: If your suggestion is followed that anyone can plot trips from open time if they have the space on their schedule, why have MU at all? Again, you wanna fly? Get up at 5am with everyone else and see what's available. As far as sick MU...plot the trip you want and then send a Hisend (or have an AVRS automated option) to put the time in your sick bank.
4. How about close bidding on the 3rd or 4th of the month? My friend who flies for Frontier already knows her January schedule; so, she can make plans for her time off that month. Or, how about bid for two months at a time? US Airways does that.
5. Even better suggestion for Reserve...make what we call Reserve what we now call Availability. They just started that at Frontier and it works beautifully. Every Reserve plots their own trips, period. If you don't plot yourself something by a given time, crew scheduling can plot something for you, just like with the Availability f/as today. The people who don't plot something for themselves end up with the cr*p that is in Open time at 7pm now. This frees up Crew Scheduling to handle the emergency stuff and watch for low-time "non-plotters."
6. I don't know what to do about the "relative position"/HI25 farce. It certainly isn't honored in actuality at all. During my July reserve on the last day of the month I was good, at 7pm the night before I was #18 of 24. I was the first Ready Reserve assigned a trip for the next day after the 7pm assignments. I was called at 8:51pm for a 757 turn that needed to be completely staffed. The other 3 Ready Reserves called for the trip were #14, #16, and #17. I printed out the N3D and took it to my base manager. She called someone in Scheduling and asked how this could have happened. She told me that he/she said that "they were trying to eliminate illegalities in the new month." There were still 4 days left in the current month. I'd like to know how a minimum time turn of the 5th to the last day of the current month could cause an illegality in the following month. I just can't make that math work--on a 30 in 7 or a 7 day legality.

 

[Garfield1966]

I dog in the race in so far as the perpetually removed (I think that’s your term) But I can see how that would piss you off.

Planning. LOL. Not laughing at you. Just the idea of them actually doing a half way better job much less a better job. The hammer heads gave bid leaves last year from Dec 15-31. That’s the definition of a dumb ass if I ever heard one.

#2. Yea, I can believe that. The hours ended up being quite low. I am guessing people were stocking up to call in sick for the holidays.

3 and 6 can only work if planning finds a brain and uses it and even then I can see problems.

OK, with out looking at your skd I will make a few guesses. You may have been looking at a 30/7 or you were at the end of your reserve line (what we call a use or lose). If today is the 25th the month ends on the 30th we will use someone who is only god for the next 2 days (off 27-30) before we use someone who is good for the next 5 days. I have more of an opportunity to use the 5 day than the 2day person. If I have a butt load of people, I probably will not care unless I am worried about weather (which we had in ORD and NE) or holidays.

Some of those people above you may not have been legal. I have had reserve lists where the top 10 people (lowest GTD) were only good for a turn or 2 day and I have a 3 day trip. If number 11 on the list is a 3 day person, guess what, you are now number one.

Since you guys can bid your self illegal for the next month (that’s a crazy idea if I ever heard one) we may want to protect the beginning of the month. I was working ILA and the coverage on the 2nd was going to be bad. I used the reserves who did not need to come of a trip at the beginning of Dec first and then moved on to the ones who would end up opening up trips.

Relative position is a very general guideline at best. Just because it says you are number 10 do not take it to the bank, just ignore it and pretend you are number one and when you don’t get called, then you can complain about that lol.

As for letting reserves plot them selves, in a perfect world I guess it would work but there are times when we need to tweak it to make it work. We can plot either by GTD or we can optimize. GTD we use the RSV with the lowest hours on the biggest trip and work our way down. When manning is good this is how we plot (80% of the time, maybe more). When manning is tight we can optimize. If I have a bunch of turns and only a few multi day trips I will plot my turn reserves (regardless of GTD) on the turns and then multi day reserves on the multi day trips. The goal is to save as many of my multi day reserves for the next day. We also can non-qual the FFP position as well as the speaker poss if required. We can also determine that we will just cover certain flights to FAA min.

So as you can see, there are a lot of variables that come into play where we need to control the reserve plot to safe guard the operation.

Hope this helps shed a little more light on the issue.

 

[Skymess]

You and I will have to respectfully agree to disagree about the issue of flight attendants who never fly. Not just medical, there should be NO benefits period for someone who doesn't come to work--unless they are on a valid leave as I specified in my original post. You should have heard me trying to explain to my brother-in-law who is an executive with a major electricity generating company about employees who never come to work, but can not be forced to quit, retire or be fired.

Do you think that non-rev travel benefits cost the company nothing? Especially since these people retain not only their own travel benefits, but the other D2 and D3 benefits as well.

Uh, no, I don't think it costs the company anything to have people use their pass benefits. If the seat is going out empty, then what is the difference if it goes out with a body in it? We have unarguably the highest non rev first/business class charges in the industry. If we have to take first, they make money. They also make money on our D3 charges. Don't talk about fuel burn either because we accept other airline's pilots and flight attendants on the airplane at zero charge so we should be accepting our own employees for nothing.

Do you think there is no cost to the company (or the union) for that matter to keep that place held even though that person never shows up to work?

The union makes money whether the people show up or not. I don't necessarily think the company is losing out by having the people out except with medical costs. Most FAs are working double schedules to make up for the flying that these people aren't doing.

What about the cost to the company and the union of junior f/as who quit because they feel like they will never be able to hold anything decent?

What about the flight attendants at bases like DFW and ORD who are still on reserve after 20 years because of all the dead weight above them that prevents recalling furloughees or hiring new f/as? If you look at the flying assigned to those bases vs. the "active" base roster, they are overstaffed. If you look at the flying assigned to those bases vs. the number of f/as willing to work on airplanes that have passengers on them, I would bet they are understaffed.

Jim, I personally believe we would have more people quitting daily if those people who didn't fly didn't drop their schedules. You were furloughed, right? Do you know how difficult it was to get ANY trips when all the people who usually don't fly were out on leaves? VERY difficult. If we lost the dead wood we'd all be working. If we all were full time workers everyone would have their trips in hiboard with tt and no oe because they would be afraid of dumping their trips because they might not get a replacement. That's what IDF was like when I was there and they lost two trips.

P.S. dead wood isn't a senior thing either. ALL the FA's at IDF worked high time and they are all senior. I can name quite a few people my seniority and junior who don't fly and work the 35 hour threshold to their medical benefit advantage.

No. If people want to quit because they think they should get automatic seniority, then they should quit. There are many things that can be done to tweak the entire system but I do like that people have the flexibility to come to work or not. I just don't think they should be rewarded with medical for part time work. Every company needs part timers but most companies don't pay medical for part timers.

 

[jimntx]

Every company needs part timers but most companies don't pay medical for part timers.

Most companies don't provide ANY free benefits for part-time workers. Yes, there are some, and we are not going to start listing the ones that your aunt's best friend's hairdresser works for and get 6 weeks paid vacation each year. The majority of companies do not provide any benefits to part-timers unless a state or Federal law says they have to. The paycheck you receive as a part-timer is the benefit.

 

[jersey777]

Most companies don't provide ANY free benefits for part-time workers. Yes, there are some, and we are not going to start listing the ones that your aunt's best friend's hairdresser works for and get 6 weeks paid vacation each year. The majority of companies do not provide any benefits to part-timers unless a state or Federal law says they have to. The paycheck you receive as a part-timer is the benefit.

Whose side are you on? Why don't you go back to management with your mentality. The BEST thing about this job is its flexibility. That is why this job is so unique and that people will line up out the door when we start hiring. I think sometimes you should send your contract suggestions to the American negotiating team and not to the APFA.

 

[Veritas]

If we lost the dead wood we'd all be working.

I thought that work was the point of having a job.

Silly me.

 

[Garfield1966]

I thought that work was the point of having a job.

Silly me.

Come on now, try and keep up. Getting out of working is the point of having a job.

 

[jimntx]

Whose side are you on? Why don't you go back to management with your mentality. The BEST thing about this job is its flexibility. That is why this job is so unique and that people will line up out the door when we start hiring. I think sometimes you should send your contract suggestions to the American negotiating team and not to the APFA.

Aye, Aye, Sir! I'll get right on that. The problem is that any airline can not afford much more of these people who refuse to quit or retire or work. I know it is the FA-pc viewpoint that because we like it that way, the rest of the world has to live with it. Surprise. Maybe, maybe not.

The reason I sent them to the APFA side is if some of these things were implemented and get rid of the dead wood, we might use the dollar value of these items to get some things we really need in the next contract.

The airlines are looking to return the job of f/a to what it once was...a job that young ladies and gentlemen of good family and background do for 3 or 4 years until they get travel out of their system, marry well, find a real job, or just get sick of trying to live on not very much money. With one exception...it would also appeal to people like me who have an income from other sources and might want to do it for a few years before they really retire.

Brace yourselves for the next contract if we aren't willing to give up some of these "perks"--like never coming to work. You have to remember, these people not flying is not really saving the company that much money. Besides, the company has to budget as if they were flying because they MIGHT decide to fly some more and there is nothing the company could do to stop them from it; so, they have to financially plan as if all those top of scale people were actually flying.

 

[AAStew]

Jim
You keep beating that dead horse. People have provided arguments here for the flexibility, but you are still envious of the trips you want and can't have. You should have applied as a 20 year old! Most of us are working this job for the flexibility. It certainly isn't for the glamour, (otherwise YOU would have never been hired oh ancient one). I have just taken 6 months off without flying a trip. Junior f/a's picked them up. I lost my 420 and when I return tomorrow, I will officially owe the company $5200 for my medical benefits. I stayed home for family matters. I will not see a dime in my paycheck until April. When I come back now I will be flying extra to make-up my hours. Thank God that I can! I will be doing another flight attendant a favor as so many have done for me by flying my trips. It all eventually equals out, if you had worked here long enough you would realize this. If you don't like our system please leave, retire, whatever! :bleh: