Last week there were two days of Joint Board hearings as well as the quarterly meeting with the members in SFO.
For the quarterly meetings there were several committee reports and each of the five meetings had at least thirty minutes devoted to Q&A's. Many topics were discussed such as the future negotiations schedule as well as many questions regarding benefits, pensions, retro, seniority integration and various other topics. Each of the five sessions had over two hundred attendees. In my opinion the meetings were productive.
The Joint Board heard four cases over the two days involving terminations, scope and seniority issues. As a result of this new process SFO now has approximately 39 open third steps. This represents a huge reduction in grievances as when we started SFO had over 150 outstanding third steps dating back to 1998. The next hearing schedule is being formulated for later this month in Chicago.
In Dulles last week five ramp personnel were fired for taking food off the galleys. What is significant here is they were caught by an outside law enforcement agency that had been watching them for some time. Across the system it seems we have had several of these cases of eating from the galleys spring up in the mechanics group lately. There is really only one thing you can do to protect yourself. It should be obvious but stay out of the galleys. If you make this very serious mistake and get caught, as the five apparently were, admit it. Don't compound the problem by making up a story or denying it if caught red handed. There are never any guarantees in the grievance process, but honesty and contriteness are two huge mitigating factors if you have to appear before an arbitrator. The number of theft cases won by any Union is extremely small and it generally comes down to the arbitrator weighing a couple of mitigating factors if the Union prevails. It really is different than it was years ago when management turned a blind eye to this as they are now taking it very serious. Now the flight kitchen people are being trained to immediately call their supervisors if they witness anyone taking things from the carts as well as the above mentioned law enforcement group watching for this activity. Please protect yourself, there is nothing in those carts worth the anxiety you will bring to yourself or your family if you're caught.
Congress as of this post has not passed an FAA reauthorization bill.
Please take the time to participate in the FAA fatigue study for mechanics. This important study will eventually lead to changes in duty time limits for mechanics that will most likely affect your ability to work overtime. Here is the link.
That's all for now,
Bob
