Twice,
The ramifications were just as bad or worse for the extra 352 that were captured from their leaves just to get to the 200 actives. Not only that, AFA would be breaking their contract come June when more furloughs including these 200 will take place. No Senior f/a can be Invol furloughed while someone junior to them is on a VF. That is just what happened to those 352. Some were on maternity and medical leaves as well. Those folks belonged to another VF, and that will happen come June again. AFA needed to fix it now, or pay the price in June. I am not sure you can conceptualize this. You know that I was a proponent to leave folks furloughed and have sec. 19.2 trigger. But that turned out to be a worse disaster for everyone concerned. Keep in the forefront of your mind, that we would have been fighting a lose/lose battle. Many of the folks who wanted to 'bypass recall" would not be permitted to collect unemployment (the main reason why they wanted to remain furloughed and look for other options while collecting). Not only that the 352 would not be allowed to continue to collect unemployment, that would cease, as well as medical for those folks who were part of the 552 that are on maternity and regular straight medical leaves. Keep in mind that we could not pull out those 352 from the 552, because AFA would be breaking their own contract language by allowing more senior f/as to be INVOL. furloughed while a junior f/a remained on VF or on some kind of leave other than INvol. NO GOOD! Then on top of that, it would have been a disaster come this JUne.
AFA hashed it out on Saturday for 3 hours by conference. They realized, that what must be done is to revert everyone back to Jan. 14 status. THIS WAS THE LEAST COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO ALL PARTIES. The only folks who would have been unaffected by enacting 19.2 would be those who were going to MAA. AND THE NUMBERS WERE SO FEW. Most of the folks who wanted to bypass, wanted the unemployment WHICH THEY WOULD NOT BE GETTING. AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE 552 WOULD NO LONGER HAVE 3 YEARS PENSION CREDITS, SEVERANCE OR UNEMPLOYMENT, if AFA continued to do it the way you think would have been fair. We also couldn't arbitrate the unemployment or pension credits and severance because U was offering your job back, which is the purpose of the VF. Re read sec. 19.2. The only thing that language allows you to do is bypass recall and remain on furlough, but their are no benefits to it once management calls you back and you bypass. They are offering you your job back, no arbitrator will see it you're way to collect all the perks to remain out.
The whole purpose of the VF language and insistance on following our contract language was to save the 200 actives. By allowing f/as to remain on the furlough status that VP Hendry had put out in the letter and not to rescind the furlough, would have disenfranchised more f/as in the long run.
Sorry, AFA could just not take that road. AFA did the right thing at this juncture. NO doubt about it. Twice, you just have no idea of the ramifications that would have ensued...plus down the read AFA would have stepped in dog dodo breaking our own contract. Also, keep in mind, these f/as who go back to those bases will be reimbursed for their losses they incurred in their move and also going back up.
Nope! This is it. No young being sacrificed here, they've been saved from a much worse possible scenerio. Not sure you can follow this.