National Seniority Integration Committee Survey

October 18, 2012
Survey fielded to assist the National Seniority Integration Committee
The Airline Division has fielded a survey and it is now available at:
http://surveygoldplus.com/s/2B85473BE6084779/35.htm.
The reason for the survey is to offer the entire membership the chance to weigh in on the different ideas suggested by rank and file members of the national seniority integration committee.
This survey is designed to help the committee respond to the desires of the members in regards to the different proposals.
The results will be tabulated by each subsidiary group in order to properly gauge the will of each group moving forward.
All members are urged to participate as the outcome could lead to either continuing the process of expedited bargaining or spending years in court as the issues are litigated and or arbitrated. The rank and file seniority integration team meets again the last week of October so it is important that you participate now as the survey will close on October 28^th.
Please ensure that your coworkers are made aware of this survey.

 October 12, 2012

Airline Division meets with new Senior VP Tech Ops

On October 9th, Airline Division Director David Bourne, Attorney Ed Gleason, and Representatives Clacy Griswold, Paul Alves and Bob Fisher met with Greg Hart, the new Senior VP of Tech Ops along with Doug McKeen and Mike Bonds. This meeting was solely for the purpose of meeting the new Vice President. While no business was discussed, the Airline Division explained that one of its top priorities is and will be continuing to recapture work lost through previous outsourcing. The meeting went well. On a related issue; recently a management change occurred for the sub United GSE and facilities mechanics. Mike Lorenzeni has moved on and Ray Ames will assume his duties in regards to these two groups. Ray will report to Joe Ferreria in Tech Ops.

Negotiating Committee Correction

One name was inadvertently left off the list for the national rank and file negotiating committee. Allen Cosides was left off the list but will be attending negotiations as the national coordinator for the GSE members across the system. Allen’s presence will not affect the makeup of voting members, but he will have input to all issues concerning the new agreement.

Committee Update

The negotiating committee met September 20th and 21st in Denver for the purpose of creating an abbreviated opening proposal for the amalgamated agreement. This is one of the preliminary parts of the expedited mediation process. The committee spent the two days looking at each of the articles and proposals suggested by the members and steering committee and placed them in an order of importance.The group met again the week of the 24th and spent the time working in small subcommittees reviewing each line of each article of the three agreements including the new proposals and created recommendations to the various differences. There were many distinctions and each of these was placed in positions of importance.

The work was concluded this week in Chicago where the team took the results of the previous two meeting weeks and created a combined plan which will be sent to the company. This step will begin the back and forth dialog with the company defined in interest based bargaining. With this step in place, the expedited negotiation process can begin.

One final hurdle which remains is the official NMB Expedited Negotiating Training. The Team is waiting on training dates which can only be issued from the NMB. We have repeatedly made requests and expect the call for training to happen at any time and the committee is standing by and ready. This training for the new NMB procedures is an important requirement of the expedited mediation process.

Benefits Committee Update

Since the last Benefits update, the committee has met on three occasions to continue working on finalizing the opening proposals for benefits and pension. With the continued help of Hemant Berry, Assistant Director, Benefits Department for the IBT; and Pete Hardcastle, Pension Consultant from Cheiron, a recommendation will be given to the negotiating committee within the next few weeks, so they can be prepared and ready when the IBB process starts.

With many sub company differences to overcome, the committee is confident they will be giving the negotiating committee a strong starting point for these issues.

Seniority Committee Update

The Seniority Committee will meet again the week of the 15th to continue discussions on the combined seniority lists. One of the tasks assigned to the Seniority Committee has been to review the seniority lists of each work area and push for obvious corrections from local management. The hope is to limit the number of actual seniority discrepancies and protests by making sure the list is as accurate as possible. 

Watch the Debates Last Night?

I watch some but I missed this one. Mitt leave the bird alone.

Romney Promises To Fire Big Bird — Big Bird Fights Back, On Twitter

During the first Obama-Romney presidential debate, Mitt Romney promised to fire Big Bird. Romney, talking about the deficit early in the debate, said to moderator Jim Lehrer, “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS…. I like PBS, I love Big Bird — I actually like, you too — but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for.”

Some enterprising individual quickly created a new Twitter account, @FiredBigBird, and as of this writing has 17,725 followers, all in the space of less than two hours. Source

 

BREAKING NEWS - BAIN CAPITAL HAS SHIPPED SESAME STREET TO CHINA... STORY DEVELOPING

 

 Organizing a Million Muppet March against Mitt...#MuppetsAgainstMitt

UAL Negotiating Committee Update

Assisted by the generosity of Local 455, its Principal Officer Steve Vairma, Business Agent John Hennelly and the Local committee; the negotiating committee met for over a two week period beginning on September 20^th and 21^st in Denver, Colorado. The committee spent the two days reviewing and prioritizing each of the articles and proposals suggested by the steering committee.

The committee reconvened September 26^th through the 28^th in Denver and spent the scheduled meeting time going through the three contracts of CO, UA and MCI to look for and identify any and all differences to each of the contracts in an effort to combine them into one.

The fourteen member committee was broken down into seven sub committees, with each committee was assigned a BA to assist with the review and help resolve questions the sub committees identified. Where differences were identified, recommendations were developed and reported to the entire committee. These recommendations will be reviewed when the committee meets in Chicago starting on October 10^th.

The protocol agreement is not yet been completed. A key to that process; the outstanding issues delaying the completion of the protocol agreement; is defining the number of open issues. Once that is done it is expected the protocol will be finalized quickly. The committee is also awaiting dates for official training regarding the NMB expedited bargaining procedures. Dates have been suggested to complete the training and the membership will be notified when the schedule is confirmed.