Northwest Mountain Region
August Quarterly
30th August 2000
SEATTLE, WA FAA Regional Office
- In attendance for NAATS:
- Don McLennan, Seattle AFSS (NAATS Regional Director);
- John Dibble, Denver AFSS (NAATS Regional Coordinator);
- Darrell Mounts, Denver AFSS (Facility Representative);
- Greg Devereaux, Boise AFSS (Facility Representative).
In attendance for FAA:
- Lee Daniels, Regional Office
- Jane Inaba, Regional Office
- Dan Boyle, Regional Office (to begin)
Agenda Items
1. Staffing; request a briefing on staffing levels for the FSS option in this region. Include projected hiring and placement for the next fiscal year.
National Staffing issues. Not only do the numbers make no sense; there is a caveat. What is the status of national arbitration? The ATMT (Air Traffic Management Team-consists of all the Air Traffic Division Managers and the "heads" of the lines of business in DC) had discussed, in Reno recently, the attrition rate likely increasing within the Agency and what to do? They realize they need to address this issue as soon as possible. We need a pipeline at the Academy as well as they need a pipeline to fill management positions. They are trying to develop a plan that will address these issues and, hopefully, have some recommendations to overcome what we see as a very serious situation in the near future.
Where is the new hire for BOI? Dan said distribution is not in concrete. He said, as of yet, there is no hiring plan. He did not feel that we had negotiated the numbers, merely that we had discussed it. His point being not as much it was a negotiable issue or not as much as we simply had not got down that avenue.
Dan did address the importance of having a negotiated staffing number that would bind both NAATS and the Agency into an agreement both sides would want to fulfill. He said that since NATCA had successfully done this with the Agency he was compelled to fulfill their requirements ahead of NAATS who, as you know, are still struggling with the Agency. This is eminently understandable. What eventually falls out is that once the RO is able to satisfy NATCA they will give us their best attention and work whatever they can with what is left. Understand, this is nobody's fault but our own that we don't have a negotiated agreement in place. Having said that it is clear that until we develop some political clout the Agency is happy to take advantage of the "little person". It is really an unfortunate situation.
- Darrell Clark is a known entity to Lee.
- Dave Masson at IKK wants to go to DEN.
On hardship issues NAATS has no contractual article so our "hardships" are more administrative in nature. Here, again, is an excellent example of where the Agency, at least in my view, hides behind their inability to do anything in the absence of a negotiated agreement. I always thought the whole point of taking the time and energy to work towards the goal of attaining a management position was to be able to set as many wrongs as right as possible with the power and authority of the system.
Mounts discussed the Sharon Wilkens situation and we handed paperwork to Lee to assist him in his efforts to place her in Denver AFSS.
2. Oasis; request a briefing on the progress of OASIS installation at Seattle.
3. Consoles; request a briefing on the schedule for installing the new consoles in all the ANM AFSS facilities
4. Call Offloading (Seattle); request a briefing and discussion on the status of call off-loading in Seattle with regard to OASIS installation/ training/implementation.
Do we need to gear up the other facilities to accept more traffic? Is overtime use causing a hardship on the controllers?
5. Call Offloading (Casper); request a briefing and discussion on the status of call offloading by Casper AFSS.
NAATS gave them the history of the whole issue. The staffing piece was the primary piece of information. Then the staffing was reduced with three people so it was re-implemented. So we are to the point where we need to know if the staffing is sufficient to stop the off-loading. Maybe there is an issue of having too many people on the day shift and it is time to rework the watch schedule.
6. Sick Leave; request a discussion around the issue of sick leave. And cases where it could be converted to LWOP or AWOL.
This issue was discussed and the Union presented their issues. The region admitted that as it was explained to them it was a novel approach to a traditional "sick leave usage" issue.
7. RAIS - Remote Airport Information Service; request a briefing and discussion on plans for implementing this service in this region. What airports have been identified as candidates for receiving this service? Has this region set up parameters/criteria for determining at which airports this service would be feasible/beneficial?
We requested background information (explain).
8. Contract Implementation; request a discussion on how we want to proceed, as a region, with the implementation, of the new contract, when it is ratified.
NATCA briefed field facilities through a "national" team at the regional level. NATCA put out a national briefing guide. We requested to do a regional briefing, facility by facility. It is envisioned as having either a regional team to go out into the field or else bring in the Managers and FacReps for briefings in the region office.
9. OLYMPICS; request a briefing on the status of preparation for the Salt Lake City Olympic event.
We asked to address our concerns about FSS in a letter through Gordy to Jeff. Lee will follow-up and get back to us.
10. Open Items.TFRs
Greg presented his suggestion that there needs to be changes in the way these are formatted in the system. George Orr came in and said he would assist us in pursuing this if, after we have seen the formal response, and it does not address adequately this issue we want to push this issue up to HQ. George thinks he has enough information to send a request to HQ but he will develop a plan and contact me with what we all hope is the best way to proceed.
Overtime for AFSS facilities instead of Temporary Towers
As is turns out the National Forest Service funds Temporary Towers. The only function the FAA performs is to supply people who are also funded by the Forest Service. In other words the FAA spends virtually, no money on temporary towers and would have difficulty getting funds to staff, through overtime, specific FSS facilities.
Flight Following
Greg requested relief on a situation that has occurred at BOI. It is about the necessity of having to do SAR on an aircraft using the flight following service with virtually no information because the pilot had not filed a flight plan. Some pilots choose not to file but just use flight following to receive what they perceive to be SAR insurance.
Lee suggested that we file a UCR. Everyone acknowledged this is a tricky issue but it is hard to see where the FAA is able to educate pilots about this potential hole in their safety net.
Lee also suggested that we consider changing handbook requirements to allow FSS to get some information on tape and we could at least use that to try and conduct SAR activity.
BOI Grievance
Greg presented the issue and what we believe is new information. Our attempt at presenting this issue, yet one more time, is to make sure we have discussed this as thoroughly as possible and to give Lee an opportunity to resolve this instead of being stuck with a decision made by his predecessor who did not have this information.
Jane Inaba briefed us on national issue of OSI/SCI.
| MAIN INDEX | INFORMATION | CONSTITUTION | PRESS RELEASES |
| RECENT UPDATES | NEWSLETTERS | CONTRACT | POLITICS |
| RENAISSANCE | NEWS ARTICLES | FACREP HELPS | HUMOR |
| MY NOTES | LETTERS to MEMBERS | LINKS | NATIONAL/REGIONAL REPS |