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Hello all,
This week was spent primarily dealing with planning and organizational issues for NATCA in Washington next month. Room lists, reservations, congressional appointments, logistics and a myriad of other needs and annoyances kept me occupied. This is one of the Unions biggest events and though the National Office is picking up a lot more of the details this time than in years past, it still can be a labor-intensive (no pun intended) bugger to put together. The central region has well exceeded its room compliment but that should work out since some regions are under. In fact, if you had found yourself action impaired or procrastination enriched or somehow hadn’t heard of the event or maybe just now are finding out that the eight way swap you had to diagram to get the time off is a go, we might still have some spots from other regions available so give me a call quickly at 417-894-6887 or email ganderson@natca.org . The dates are May15th to the 18th.
The attached article can give you a couple of perspectives to the displaced flight service employees treatment. On the one hand it may get under your skin that they have priority placement on bids to keep a job. On the other hand it could keep your jaw agape considering the remarkable hosing these folks are taking from their soon to be former employer. It’s scary to think of this all in light of proposed tower closures, reduction in services, consolidations and the like. A lot of us never thought we could be placed in to a similar situation when we first hired on but there it is. Your mileage may vary. Are you giving to the NATCA PAC?
Grant Anderson National Legislative Committee Central Region
From AVWEB 4/3/05
FAA, NAATS Reach Severance Deal Re FSS While the future of the flight service station contract is anything but settled, employees who will lose their jobs in the eventual transformation of the system now know how they will be dealt with. The FAA and the National Association of Air Traffic Specialists have reached a reduction in force (RIF) agreement that the FAA calls a "generous compensation package" and the union calls "the least any terminated employee could ask." The deal gives displaced workers a week's pay for each of the first ten years of service and two weeks for every year beyond the tenth. It also gives them first crack at any FAA jobs that come open for which they are qualified for two years. As always, the devil is in the details and both sides got some significant concessions, according NAATS spokesman Mike Sheldon. Sheldon said the initial deal offered the employees would have knocked them off the priority hiring list if they had accepted or even been offered a job that paid as much or more as they made with the FAA. The catch, according to Sheldon, was that the clause applied even to short-term employment that will be offered to existing employees by contractor Lockheed Martin to keep the system running during the transition phase. Under the new deal, transition jobs are exempt from the priority hiring scheme. Sheldon said the FAA got a major concession when the union agreed that employees would get only two months' notice of their imminent departure. Once the notice is given, affected employees can take up to 32 hours per pay period to look for another job; an earlier notice period could have left the system desperately short-staffed during the busy summer season. Sheldon said the deal has no effect on the union's age-discrimination lawsuit against the FAA or protests filed to try to stop the contract process.
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