2.13.20 – SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON RECOGNITION & SCOPE PRESIDENTIAL ARBITRATION

Thursday, February 13, 2020

APFA REACHES SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
ON RECOGNITION & SCOPE PRESIDENTIAL ARBITRATION

As APFA prepared to enter arbitration to challenge the Company’s use of members of management performing inflight Flight Attendant duties in violation of our Scope and Recognition language, the Union and the Company agreed to meet with a mediator from the National Mediation Board in a final attempt to reach a fair resolution. It was a tough and long mediation.

After many hours, the mediation was successful, and the parties were able to come to a settlement on this important grievance. A settlement that provides a benefit for our Flight Attendants and protects our flying!

Under the settlement agreement, the Company has agreed that members of management who are NOT on the Flight Attendant System Seniority List will perform no inflight Flight Attendant duties at all.

The parties agreed to a very limited circumstance when members of management on the Flight Attendant System Seniority List may  “buy a trip” from a Flight Attendant, in seniority order. If a Flight Attendant accepts a manager’s offer to buy a trip, the Flight Attendant will receive full pay and credit for the trip. Again, this only applies to managers on the Flight Attendant System Seniority list.

As an added bonus, that Flight Attendant who agrees to allow the trip to be bought may also pick up a trip on the TTS or UBL without regard to the original footprint of the bought trip.

Bought trips are not to be used as QARs (Quality Assurance Rides), and cannot be used to discipline or monitor Flight Attendants. Instead, they offer managers an opportunity to “Walk-A-Mile” in Flight Attendant’s shoes as a working member of a crew on a full trip sequence. However this limited situation contained in the settlement places more restrictions on managers than those that existed under the Co-Fly or Walk-A-Mile programs that both LUS and LAA Flight Attendants have seen before.

I would like to thank the APFA Advocates and Flight Attendants that assisted in protecting  our contractual language and our work on the aircraft. We were ready to continue that fight all the way to arbitration. However, with more narrow provisions for management flying, an opportunity for Flight Attendants to be compensated in exchange, and a recognition of the respect that our work deserves, APFA ultimately secured a fair settlement.

The full terms of the settlement can be read here.

https://www.apfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Signed-Settlement-Recognition-Scope.pdf

In Unity,

Liz Geiss
APFA National Vice President
[email protected]