The negotiating committee began year 2013 with formal meetings the week of January 7th.
These meetings started off with a day and a half of training courtesy
of the National Mediation Board. This Board required training for the
expedited facilitated problem solving, or FPS, process placed the
company and the union in the same room listening to course instruction
lead by senior mediator Pat Sims assisted by mediator Michael Kelliher.
The purpose of these exercises was to get negotiators familiar with
facilitated problem solving. Training was well received by both parties
and all participants including upper management and union leaders took
part.
The
first step towards beginning the process is for the parties to come to
an agreement of guidelines. This Protocol Agreement was completed by the
parties just prior to the start of negotiations. The full protocol
agreement can be found by visiting www.Teamsters.org and tabbing to the Airline Division section.
According
to the agreement, these talks will be divided into two phases. The
first phase is the reconciliation phase and will be the process of
taking the differences in the contract books for the three companies and
amalgamating them in to one. It is this first phase that will consume
the majority of our initial meeting time with the company. To accomplish
this phase, we have divided into small groups of negotiators and
Business agents who are tasked with certain articles. These small groups
meet with similar company groups and the two parties run down the
entire article. In many cases the language is taken as is and agreements
can be made immediately. Combining three contracts, however, will
obviously bring about some points of disagreement.
The
points that are not immediately agreed to are worked out using the
process taught through the training earlier in the week with the goal of
resolving the differences. Each of these sub-committee meetings have
been presided over by members of the Board to help move the process
along. The specific articles discussed this week were Articles 2, 8, 9,
14, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and the Savings Clause.
In phase two of the negotiations the parties will discuss new work rules as well as the entire economic package.
The
progress that was made in these last few days ordinarily may have taken
months and we look forward to continuing the sessions next week. One
Teamster resource that should not go unnoticed is the legal department.
Our IBT legal representative, Ed Gleason, has been personally on hand
and available during the entire process to help us when needed. The
entire negotiating team has progressed with the help of his expertise
and dedication.
Agreements
in principle of non economic issues were reached on Definitions,
Holidays, Vacations, Grievance Procedure, Arbitration, General and
Miscellaneous, Apprentice Mechanics and Transportation. Negotiations are
scheduled to resume next week in Chicago followed by the week of the 21st. The week of the 28th
will be used for internal committee work. For the entire month of
February the parties are scheduled to meet every week in Chicago.
The negotiations update and protocol agreement have been posted on the Division page and the UAL/CAL/CMI Mechanics Weekly Update page:
