July Grievance Mediation Session Update

Grievance Mediation Update

AFA and Horizon mediated several grievances in a session facilitated by the National Mediation Board on July 23-25. Mediation is a voluntary process and an avenue to resolve grievances before arbitration. The mediator helps the parties reach an agreement, but cannot force either side to make or accept an offer.

Cases discussed included:

1. A Flight Attendant who could not split a trip when his passport was out for renewal because the trip had International flying. The contract does not make an exception for this. Management is doing some research and will respond.

2. Inability to split a trip that had already begun. Management claimed that trips could not be split because all trades with open time must be submitted at least four (4) hours before check-in. AFA asserted, and provided evidence of, a past practice of splitting trips while they were in progress. Management is researching this issue.

3. Inability to split a trip more than once when day-at-a-time vacation is used for a previous split of the same trip. Our contract allows for unlimited splits, but management says that AIMS cannot accommodate this once a vacation code is placed on the trip. AFA believes that AIMs must be fixed to comply with the contract. Management proposed a manual workaround, but of course, the Flight Attendant’s ability to drop may be gone by the time they reach a supervisor. We have not reached a resolution.

4. Day-at-a-time vacation used for transition trips. A Flight Attendant dropped a transition trip. They were surprised when they received their PBS award for the next month that they had been assigned flying on days in the new month that had been covered by the transition trip. Their vacation days in the current month were honored, but the days in the new month were not considered planned absences. Investigation by both sides revealed that this was a long-standing past practice, so the grievance was withdrawn.

5. Two grievances covered Flight Attendants erroneously receiving denial codes, one occurred during SAP and one during normal trading. AIMS was sporadically unavailable during these time periods. Both cases were settled on a non-precedent setting basis. The overall issues with AIMS remain and will be discussed more fully at our next session.

6. Concerns at SEA Radisson Hotel. There were some initial hiccups when we first started using this hotel, including unhelpful front-desk staff and a housekeeper who twice tried to enter an occupied room. We had a good discussion about these issues, and they do not seem to have recurred. We will be withdrawing the grievance, but can file again if the problems start up again.

7. Re-bidding and award of Recurrent Ground (RG) after contractual times. Management erroneously listed the wrong closing time for recurrent bids in one domicile. Bids were awarded. Management then contacted all Flight Attendants in that base and told them they had an extra day to bid. Many did, which changed the original awards. The parties agreed that if something similar were to occur again, AFA would be notified and both sides would come to a mutual agreement on how to address the situation.

8. Refusal to “meet and confer” over increase in boarding times. As we all know, management recently started sending passengers to the aircraft earlier than previously, at least on STAR flights. Under the contract, management must “meet and confer” with AFA prior to changing boarding time. AFA believes “meet and confer” is a term of art under the Railway Labor Act, and a synonym for “negotiate.” Management believes they only have to inform us of the change, not reach an agreement. This case will go to arbitration.

9. Refusal to provide scheduling tapes. Management unilaterally changed the past practice of providing email audio files of calls to Crew Scheduling upon AFA request. We were informed that this is a new Company-wide policy. We explained that the contract supersedes Company policy, and the contract (and past practice) require management to provide us with information needed to enforce the contract. They would not budge, so this case will go to arbitration.

In other news, our federal mediator, Eva Durham, informed us that she would be retiring. We are sad to see her go, as both parties worked well with her. She will be replaced by Connor Parker, who has attended some of our sessions to get to know us and our contract. We look forward to working with Mr. Parker in the future.

Connor M. Parker

Connor M. Parker is a Mediator at the National Mediation Board. Mr. Parker joined the Board in April 2018. Prior to being selected as a Mediator in August 2022, Mr. Parker served as Confidential Assistant to Chairman Linda Puchala.

Mr. Parker has over 14 years of experience in labor relations and conflict and dispute resolution in the air and rail industries. His prior labor relations experience includes work in various capacities as a carrier advocate at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey PATH Commuter Railroad, and JetBlue Airways. Additionally, Mr. Parker has extensive apprentice experience working for several labor arbitrators.

Mr. Parker holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Master’s degree in Conflict and Dispute Resolution from the University of Oregon School of Law.