The parties met this week in Las Vegas. Among the items addressed were an IBT counter proposal to the Health and Welfare (Article 16), Letters of Agreement, and facilities maintenance Article 3 issues. The facilities committee is very close to agreement on language terms for this section. Further discussions were held regarding JFK with 3 LoA’s signed, preserving as many local positions as practicable. The MSAP program was also discussed in a separate subcommittee.
The IBT Health and Welfare subcommittee met on Tuesday, in an internal caucus with IBT Legal Counsel Ed Gleason and Benefits Actuary Gaelle Gravot of Cheiron, to address language issues in the Article 16 proposal as well as developing a counter to the Company’s most recent proposal. The amended IBT health care proposal was passed to the Company on Wednesday. A new counter proposal from the company is expected in the next round of talks.
LOA’s from all three CBA’s were discussed, resulting in some new LOA’s which were discussed to address new circumstances or clarify existing ones. In addition, some obsolete LOA’s were removed by mutual agreement. Some existing LOA’s will be amended as changes to contract language dictate.
Articles Article 3 and Article 6 were TA’d for the body of the language. There are a few LOA’s tied to these Articles which still remain open. Article 14 was discussed through the week and great progress was made towards the finalization of this Article.
Members from the Seniority Committee were on hand again this week to continue work on merging the lists. Unfortunately, this small group is not able to work continuously due to scheduling conflicts with other meetings involving the Company’s representative to the committee or the IBT committee members. Although the meeting opportunities are limited, the committee remains on hand to take advantage of any availability to meet and continue merging the list. During this week, the committee continued to address adjustments in company seniority and put together a check list for the next meeting. The committee spent a majority of their time together resolving many outstanding seniority disputes from many sUA, sCMI, and sCO stations. We were able to resolve most of these protests to the satisfaction of the members. Some of these complaints had been several years old and we are pleased that many of these matters were settled.
There will be sub-committee meetings scheduled, interim to the next scheduled round of formal negotiations in September, to address language on several remaining non-economic articles. All agreements reached in these meetings will come before the full committee for review and approval prior to being signed.
