Last
week the language committee met to go over, line by line, the changes
agreed to in principal by the sub committees over the last six weeks.
Between the three separate agreements there were over 100 items in 24
articles and provisions that required review for Phase 1 in order to
correctly draft the new language. Many of these items were small such as
changing “Continental” to “United” while others were more substantive
such as adding new language to capture concepts that were agreed to that
had no prior agreement language. The work of the language committee
will continue this week as there is still much to do in order to
complete this task.
On
Monday an executive committee review of the progress will take place.
The negotiating committee will return on Tuesday to review work done by
the language committee. In addition several sub committees will be
meeting with the assistance of the NMB to attempt to finalize any
remaining issues. Phase 1 is expected to be completed on time by the end
of the week.
Later
in the week actuaries for the parties, for the Union Peter Hardcastle
(pensions), John Colberg and Gaelle Gravot (health care), will meet to
discuss pension and benefit issues. They will be joined by our economist
Dan Akin. The purpose of this meeting is to request information and
share the vision of the IBT negotiating committee surrounding these
benefits to the company. This will lay the ground work for Phase 2
economic discussions scheduled to begin in March.
