kirkpatrick said:
Even if the company cancels 600 overage leaves effective Apr or May, won't the remaining be up on July 1? I've been wondering what the company would do if they didn't need all 1200 or so on OVL's to come back this year. Is there a provision to extend leaves or offer them again, or can they only do this when they furlough?
Whatever they do, I can't imagine only needing 600 for the whole year. Attrition for 2003 was 993, and we can expect another 1000 this year, maybe more if some overage people quit rather than go back on the line.
MK
Under our "contract"--well, what's left of it after JW's superior negotiating skills gave most of it away in the restructuring agreement fiasco--if the company declares an overage of flight attendants, they have to offer overage leaves prior to furloughing anyone.
At least once since 9/11, they did not have enough people taking overage leaves, but the company decided to live with the overage for a time in hopes that attrition would take care of it. But, that's the company's choice. If they declare an overage of 100 flight attendants and only 99 take overage leaves, the company is within its rights to furlough the one extra person.
Because all benefits except non-rev travel were eliminated from the overage leaves, I don't expect many people to take them in the future unless they have no choice--i.e., family illness or some such. Look at the last time. The company declared an overage of 5100 flight attendants. Less than 2000 took any sort of a leave.
There are always people trying to apply logic to the recall process--i.e.,
1. The senior flight attendants are going to retire soon. They are only hanging on until (pick one) April, so they can exercise their stock options/October, so they can collect on the 777 arbitration award/or the twelfth of Never (which is probably closer to the truth).
2. The number of people on the sick list means that a lot of people are burning their sick leave in anticipation of retirement/resignation/whatever.
There is a [semi]hidden advantage to the company to be seriously understaffed. Of course, there are fewer flight attendants on the payroll, but more importantly, the company may "encourage" the more senior, higher paid people to leave through constant reassignment due to "operational necessity."
The company can count also, and I'm sure that they know that some of the people currently on overage leave may not return. Look at the December recall. They needed 350 f/a's. They estimated a 10% refusal; so, they recalled 390. They had 352 return to work. Pretty slick. They also can estimate 2004 attrition. Even with all that, the Dec. 15th furloughee hotline (did you know there was such a thing?) stated that the company had completed its staffing requirements for 2004 and there were no plans to recall additional furloughees.
All that being said, there are a lot of recall rumors floating around, and, personally, I'm hoping that every one of them is true.
😀