On December 5, Sam Risoli issued a letter informing United flight attendants of the need to furlough 2,100 United flight attendants for 12 months effective March 2, 2012.
Since the issuance of the single operating certificate on November 30,
WE ARE A COMBINED AIRLINE, and manpower projections will be constantly evaluated and revised to maximize utilization, efficiency and profitability across both operations going forward.
CWA-afa Backtracks & Doublespeak
On December 5th, CWA-afa declared
"we continue to explore additional opportunities such as an early out option in combination with a voluntary cross-over program in our Expedited Negotiations. If those negotiations result in a Tentative Agreement, subject to Membership ratification, it could provide opportunities to resolve management’s staffing overage."
Now that the issue of representation has been temporarily decided, the CWA -afa feels magnanimous enough to allow “
talk” of a voluntary cross-over program. Of course, now a UA flight attendant who crosses over will be behind six or more classes of Continental new hires, but that is of no concern to the CWA-afa since their business interests has trumped flight attendants’ well-being every time.
Remember last summer? On July 10th, CWA-afa responded to the Company's cross utilization proposal by stating "
Because their proposal has no meaningful benefit to the 15,000 United Airlines Flight Attendants" and therefore,
“Be it finally resolved, The United MEC directs the MEC President to advise United management of our unequivocal rejection of the company’s proposal.”
A sudden "Change of Heart" after a thoughtless and vitriolic response to the original Company offer? Extortion anyone?
Meanwhile "Back at the Ranch" in Houston
CAL welcomed 48 new flight attendants on Friday, December 2nd! IAH Inflight Base Director Diane Carr gave the keynote speech and the latest class of flight attendants will be based in IAH.
The graduation at the Training Center in Houston was the fourth of the year and two more are planned, on December 9th and December 16th!! It is anticipated that there will be an additional 1,000 flight attendants in EWR by mid 2012!!
CAL fa's, are you sitting down for this? CWA-afa might have reached agreement with the Company for one of 12 expedited items - "jetway trades".
What is becoming more evident is that the
three "appointed" MEC UA negotiators at CWA-afa lack serious credentials next to their CAL counterparts. If their "lite" biographies are an indicator, there are serious omissions of negotiations experience as well as lack of significant union related accomplishments.
It may explain the CWA-afa's decision to take
"shortcuts" through expedited negotiations. A combined contract would be extraordinarily complicated requiring knowledge of two contracts instead of one.
They will need "Negotiating for Dummies, 2nd Edition"!
CWA-afa has already stated that
IF our expedited tentative does
NOT PASS once presented to the membership on or nearing the deadline of January 6th, we can expect to enter "
negotiations purgatory for at least another 2 years"? The CWA-afa leadership is determined to
SCARE us into voting FOR a substantially inferior contract to the Continental-like contract that they openly ridiculed during the representation election!
Does Experience & Integrity Matter?
Marcus Valentino, the new CAL MEC President, was first elected President of the Cleveland domicile in 2006 and for a second term as President and Grievance Chairperson in 2009. Marcus is currently working on his Masters of Science in Organizational Leadership and was also
a member of the IAM Negotiations Committee. They negotiated the last two industry leading legacy contracts with Continental Airlines, and United Continental Holdings.
Joining Marcus at CAL are LEC EWR President Joey Guider, and LEC IAH President Manny Mireles. The new CAL MEC and LEC officers have already pushed back against CWA-afa's attempt to force CAL to appoint key committee positions with less than 5 business days notice after all the elections. Now, CAL will have until January 1st, 2012, to fill these important positions with qualified members! The newly elected officers at CAL MEC, representing over 9,500 CAL flight attendants, may be new players in town but already are a force to reckon with at CWA-afa!!
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