9.06.23 – Negotiations Update #32

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

We made some movement in our last two mediated bargaining talks. Our meetings in DFW this week are September 6th-8th.

Economic Proposal and Next Steps

As indicated previously, management has committed to providing us with an economic proposal this week. With our record-breaking strike vote, we certainly hope the proposal will be worthy of consideration, but we will withhold judgment. Once we receive the proposal and conduct our review, we will provide a report with details, likely next week.

With the economic proposal on the table, all the issues in bargaining have been identified and discussed. We have the remaining priority issues in scheduling, reserve, and related sections, plus a handful of issues from the non-scheduling issues. This provides the basis to enter serious discussions to resolve this agreement.

But we also need to be clear: We are fighting for an industry-leading contract and are willing to do what it takes to get an agreement. Flight Attendants have spoken loudly and clearly, and we are unified and ready to reach an agreement.

Crew Accommodations

One of our major fights in this round of bargaining has been to ensure that Flight Attendants receive hotel assignments in a timely manner on an unscheduled layover such as a cancellation or rescheduling. This was the subject of a campaign earlier in bargaining with thousands of letters and both APFA and the Pilots filed Presidential Grievances on the matter.

We have been able to secure new language in Section 6- Crew Accommodations obligating the company to address these issues. In addition, new language has been added to provide compensation for these types of hotel delays.

• 150% for the duty period preceding the layover if the company fails to notify of hotel assignment within one (1) hour of the later of block-in or schedule modification;
• 150% for the sequence if the company fails to notify of hotel assignment after three (3) hours of the later of block-in or schedule modification.

With this issue resolved, we finalized our tentative agreement for Section 6.

APFA and the company agree that these changes do not release the company from their obligation to provide Flight Attendants a hotel (6.B.1). New language was added ensuring the company addresses hotel/transportation problems identified by the APFA and meeting to discuss a hotel gain share.

Speaker

The company has announced an aircraft retrofit eliminating first class and creating a much larger business class on some aircraft. We’ve heard from Speakers and non-Speakers regarding per cabin vs aircraft bidding, and we needed to find a balance. This presented an opportunity to take another look at Section 15- Speaker.

In our previous discussions, we eliminated the requirement that Speakers be given super seniority for cabin positions and that the Speaker positions be distributed per aircraft commensurate with their seniority, thus closer to honoring seniority on the aircraft.

We reopened the section and secured aircraft with Business Class seating equal to or greater than 50 seats would require up to one Speaker position in the premium cabin and up to two bid positions in the main cabin (maintaining Asia exception for an additional Speaker in the main cabin). This is like what we have today- bidding by cabin.

For aircraft with less than 50 Business Class seats the Speaker complement would be per aircraft. Speakers would still be able to hold a position in business class if their seniority could hold it but would not have super seniority for those positions.

This revised tentative agreement fairly balances the interests of all Flight Attendants. There has been misinformation spread indicating that we have decreased the number of Speakers per aircraft. To be clear, our proposals have never included a change to the total number of Speakers per aircraft.

Other Sections 

We secured a Tentative Agreement for Section 1: Recognition and Scope. There are no changes from the current JCBA language.

We spent time in both sessions working to narrow the open issues in Section 10-Scheduling. Those updates can be seen on the Negotiations status page. Discussions have begun to narrow the open issues in Section 11-Hours of Service and Section 14-International.

We continue to work on an Implementation Timeline for the secured changes. Additionally, we are still discussing Sections 30 and 31, which deal with our Grievance and System Board Procedures. A separate update on 30 and 31 will be coming out shortly.

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Continue to wear your read WAR pin and red lanyard throughout the negotiation process. Management knows we are unified, and that gives us power at the bargaining table.

In Solidarity,

Your APFA Negotiating Committee

Reese Cole
Kelly J. Hagan
Julie Hedrick
Timothy Legeros
Brian Morgan
Wendy Oswald
Susan Wroble
Joe Burns, Lead Negotiating Attorney

[email protected]