5.10.19 – APFA National President Update: Negotiations Roadshow

Good Afternoon,This is APFA President Lori Bassani with an update on negotiations road shows and other important issues for our membership. As you know, our negotiations committee embarked on a system-wide tour of our base cities to meet with, update and hear directly from our members regarding this round of bargaining. The meetings begin with a presentation by the committee, followed by questions from our members. Along with the negotiations committee, we bring along other officers and union reps who are there to assist the team in their field of expertise. Each base visit is attended by local leaders along with various national representatives.

We launched our tour in San Francisco on April 29, where the members did not disappoint. They showed up with questions and comments and shared their main concerns with our committee. It was evident that the small but mighty base of SFO cares about their flying, about the future of their careers, and they shared expectations for a new contract. The next day we visited the base of Los Angeles where our members are always very vocal. Again, they showed up and shared their disappointments, their concerns and offered constructive ideas for this round of bargaining. Phoenix rounded out the first group of base visits with the best showing of all three! Of course, PHX has specific concerns with the announcement of their base down-sizing, reserve hitting nearly the entire base, and their concerns were heard loud and clear by our team. We appreciate the lively discourse and pro-active discussions on how we can make our work lives better for our profession in the future.

This is our opportunity to make improvements during bargaining, to get back some of what we have all lost along the way and to raise the bar for all of our flight attendant colleagues and brothers and sisters of other flight attendant unions. As we work our way through this negotiations process, we welcome and offer in kind, the strong support from all unions on AA’s property. We have formed a “bargaining coalition” with our other brother and sister unions on the property who are in active bargaining: APA and TWU-IAM. And you will see their logos on our new bag tags that we hope you will proudly display. (Another bargaining coalition has been formed that includes all represented employee unions on AA’s property, both mainline and regional.) We all believe that there is strength in numbers and we have one goal: to unify and to improve the workplace for all employees. We look forward to the day we can all be proud to work for and fly American again.

I ask that each of you support all of the Unions on AA’s property by wearing your union pin. Let’s show American that the employees who built this great airline care and are not going anywhere but UP. It’s time.

Lori L. Bassani
APFA National President