Light,
You make a very good point.
MAA Committee will secure the medical, hopefully the week of April 19th. However, there are f/as who elected to keep "mainline COBRA", for $340 per month or $1162 family because of conditions they have and they must maintain Option #3. On MAA, only Option #1 can be purchased and that has the HIGHEST out of pocket expense. And there is no movement on that because that is in their "summary Plan Description" for all employees of MAA.
These f/as who have COBRA can keep it for approx 6 more months than they will have to convert to Option #1 with MAA.
The PIT local Pres will have to send something out by E-line (hopefully the furloughees are on the PIT E-line) to inform them what the job is about, especially if no movement is made on April 19th.
Management is very well aware of how difficult it is to fill these positions, and once many folks know what its about even through the media, there will be folks off the street that won't come. After all, its easier to work at Wendy's than at MAA.
We recently had a mechanical in SYR and the f/as sat on the plane with passengers going off and on the plane for 7 hours. These f/As couldn't even get off the plane to eat because of the FAR restrictions having passengers on the plane. The gate agents didn't want the folks hanging around the waiting area, so the Captain permitted the passengers to go on and off the plane. The f/as ended their first day of that trip at 0230 and were only paid 5:16 for a 14 1/2 hour day. They were paid less than $100 for their time and service they provided the customers the entire day, and no pay for those 7 hours. There were 3 mechanicals with that plane that day and the next day, the crew flew it to PIT without revenue.
Trust that every single Senior Exec is aware of this and they will need to respond in the April 19 negotiations for some "holding pay" and crew meals for these folks.
If you hired a 12 year old to baby sit your child for 7 hours, you would pay them something and feed them.
