Northwest Mountain Region
December Quarterly
16th December 2000
SEATTLE, WA
FAA Regional Office
ATTENDEES:
McLennan, Elwood, Mounts, Deveraux, Boyle, Osterdahl, Hayes, Mawhorter,
Daniels, Orr, Putz and Price.
All branches were present at the meeting.
Before beginning this meeting, knowing there would be substantial questions concerning funding issues, Osterdahl briefed us on developments within the week of the most severe funding and hiring freeze the FAA has ever seen. We agreed to hold the meeting as if this didn�t occur but with an acknowledgment from the Union that if the situation remains this dire we will subsequently engage in discussions around the reality of a stiff freeze.
The Air Traffic Division is, nationally, 70 million in the red at this point. That is only the ATD, the Agency as a whole is still worse. The immediate consequences for us relate in terms of no hiring in FSS or Air Traffic at large. The ATD has always fenced their money (up to 98% of funds) but this is somewhat new to other organizations like AF. Other than this I don�t know what else I can tell you at this time. It has been bleak this last year and it seems to me that it is getting worse than you can reasonably anticipate. You will see more particulars in the text as it affects those programs we inquired about.
Hayes
said, at this time, they are still looking for space.
Logistics and the DEN AFSS Manager, Randy Rogers, are assisting in trying
to allocate an appropriate location. Right
now it appears it will be no sooner than at least six months before we can
anticipate beginning to transition the weather observation responsibilities over
to the contractor. A more important
restriction may be contained in the above message from the Administrator.
If this is seen as substituting what we do with a contractor it may be
much more difficult to finally land that contract.
No one at the meeting was clear if it is these kinds of programs that are
in jeopardy of losing funding , or not being funded at all.
At
this Quarterly meeting there were two questions concerning this program.
First, if you work an Alternate Work Schedule shift more than eight
hours, and your training trip is of less duration than that normally required to
avoid using annual leave, must you use one/two hours more of annual leave than
an individual working a standard eight hour shift?
Secondly, if you were to be bumped on your return training flight home,
and there were no additional flights that day, is your next day (the day you
would actually be returning home) a "duty" day?
The answers to these questions were derived from the agreement between
NATCA and the FAA. The so-called "70+
questions and answers" document. To
the first, there is no requirement in that agreement that 9 and 10 hour
personnel must use four or five hours of leave on familiarization flights of
short duration. This is very likely
a requirement based on some local agreement or perhaps a misunderstanding of the
requirements of the program. As to
the second, if your next day were scheduled to be a duty day then this would be
your familiarization training travel day. However,
if for example, your next day is an RDO it is much less clear if that can be a
duty day. If your schedule can be
rearranged it might be allowable as a travel day or you may simply be traveling
on your own time. Again, these are
the agreements that must be considered and agreed to at the local level taking
into consideration the facility operation and the employee�s desires.
All days must, in one way or another, be accounted for.
NAATS pointed out that management at the national level and the union are
still completing an analogous document that would cover our bargaining unit
members and the NATCA document is only to be used as a reference guide. As an interesting aside it was noted that a national
Familiarization Training Program "audit" team was about to go nation-wide to
review the program. It is said,
there will be a NAATS member on that team.
Gordon
Burrnett has been announced as the regional manager in charge of coordinating
all of the necessary arrangements. There
is a vacancy bid currently being advertised to back-fill behind Burrnett.
The Northwest Mountain Regional Office is proceeding as if there were not
a hiring freeze, but will be forced to cancel the advertisement if they are
unable to locate the appropriate funding to fill the vacancy.
As of the time of this meeting the Air Traffic Division still has not
received their annual regional budget from Headquarters.
Burrnett will remain in the Regional Office.
We were advised that it is still not clear if this will be more of a
Regional Office operation or a Salt Lake City operation with mostly only
coordination from the Regional Office. Burrnett�s
extension will remain the same 2535. This
means that NAATS must watch closely to see if we need to place a representative
in the Seattle area as well as in Utah.
The OASIS national telecon reported that the $10 million they had for FY 2000 was for OASIS activities, not just equipment and deployment and that in actuality about $7 million was being made available for contract activity. Of that $7 million, $4 million was already "sunk" into the program (maybe deficit spending?), which left $3 million to continue development with Harris at a very reduced rate. This means it will take more money than we have to get a deployable system (getting the PTRs corrected). They said that ATP-1�s choice of alternatives as to deploy a system with the high PTRs fixed but without graphics (Seattle might stick with WSI) at a key site beginning in August of 2001. This alternative depended on the program getting a supplemental infusion of $1.5 million by the end of last week, which they did with thanks to Pike and NAATS. If they had not gotten the supplemental, the program would have slipped at least another year and maybe into complete oblivion. They expect to have full graphics and all 1,2 and 3 level PTRs fixed by early June, if all goes well. Of interest to those who are more resilient to pain than me, the question arose during the telecon if the "higher-ups" had been briefed yet? You will remember that OASIS was one of the Administrator�s pet projects at the beginning of her reign. The answer was they were trying to get on her calendar, but it is very difficult.
Also,
this month, arising from developing a new technology, another issue that has to
do with OASIS but on the personnel side. At
issue is the incredible slippage of the waterfall all the way, to no sooner
than, August of 2001. This
effectively slows all processes in place to implement OASIS including the
NAATS/FAA Partnership (did I say partnership?) FSDPS solution.
With over 18 months, for what seems to me to be a tentative
implementation date, controlling "position management" is going to be a
nightmare. The NAATS organization has many good reasons to explain the
slippage but we must now look to the placement of the FSDPS personnel and the
negative impact it may have on them. Staffing
(as in so many other instances) is the primary concern here.
If we move persons out of the FSDPS facilities too soon we may have
operational problems as well as watch schedule issues.
If we wait too long there may not be adequate time for our people to move
in a reasonable fashion that allows them options as to when, where and how. It would seem logical therefore to go back to the national
oversight team to develop some answers of how best to walk this tightrope.
I will attempt to get that ball rolling.
A
corollary issue developed at the Quarterly Meeting, concerning funding for the
new consoles, which are supposed to be installed in Seattle by February. The
answer was "funds are up in the air at ANS-400 and the HIVAC contract is in the
process of being let". Additionally,
it came out there is still not an MOU in place in Seattle concerning the
placement of consoles.
In
this same vein Elwood asked if wheel chair ramp funding was still available as
now that facility has a definite need. As
you might suspect that got a vague answer too.
A vague answer is anything other than "Yes".
We
presented the views of our representative to this committee Steve Barber from
BOI AFSS. Those concerned funding
and management�s participation. I
asked Boyle if, traditionally, this was one of those opposite agenda type of
committees. That is, management has their agenda and the Union has theirs
and the two never find any common ground. He
said he thought, historically, that was true but that of late and, on committees
of this type, they have made headway to come to a more common understanding of
what can, and needs to be, done. The Agency is trying to develop better
relations with OSHA and with their internal workings within the committee.
However, it was clear that user forums would suffer because of budget
shortfalls. If the funding issue is
not overcome and management has a legal obligation to convene this forum and
meet with field representatives, the Air Traffic Division�s concern will be
what can they do to still meet? Also
questioned was why management choose the people they do to sit in at meetings
like this? Often times the people
attending these types of forum, on behalf of management, have no developed
background in the topic area.
A
memorandum from ATP-1, Jeff Griffith, was distributed to the Regional Air
Traffic Division Managers on December 9, 1999.
It said:
"The BCS ACD replacement
program was the result of Y2K mandated upgrades.
Prior to the installation of the BCS replacement system, the only
position equipped with monitoring capability was the supervisor�s workstation.
However, during the installation of the new system, some facilities
extended the monitoring capabilities to administrative work areas. These decisions were made locally and without negotiation
with NAATS.
Air Traffic Quality
Assurance Order, 7210.56 assigns the responsibility of remote monitoring an
employee to the first-level supervisor as a method of assessing the employee�s
technical performance.
In an effort to ensure that monitoring responsibilities are in compliance
with the existing national directive, please ensure that all monitoring is done
in a confidential manner and the silent-monitoring feature is inhibited in
administrative work areas that are occupied by other than first level
supervisors."
I
asked Boyle to send guidance out to field facilities to instruct them to adhere
to the intent of the letter and Osterdahl took the IOU to make sure it happens.
Be sure and follow up on this issue.
If you have any questions call me.
We
developed the dialog (keeping in mind our new freeze) of our needs for the
coming year. I began with a
question to Boyle of what the staffing "standards" meant to him and if he
adhered to them. He said that
according to the standard itself they are to be used as guidelines.
In this region the ATD uses their Master Planning Board (MPB) for
guidance on these types of questions. This
region, by their latest count has 223 FSS personnel.
It is not clear if this is only FPL�s, or all controllers. In any event the MPB distributed our 14 supposed new hires
based on percentages of work done by some convoluted, and maybe wholly
erroneous, system. It has never
been explained to me in any detail, and I have never been invited to join their
meeting. We disagreed with their
plan and suggested that the FSS option would be better served by the following
distribution:
It
is interesting to note that ANM originally had 18 people targeted as new hires.
However, because we already got four persons assigned through other
means, Headquarters reduced our target for new hires by that number. In this region�s case the four new persons came to our
bargaining unit as placements under DPP MOU.
That is an agreement wholly outside the confines of our bargaining unit.
There is only so much stupidity that one individual can stand.
I contacted Pike and he said that he had the same sorry story from
Southern and Great Lakes regions and was working the issue now.
He said no one is willing, at this point, to confess to being that
heavy-handed. I�ll bet.
On
another note, Pike has filed a grievance against the Agency at the national
level for failing to negotiate the distribution of new employees to the regions
and the regional distribution of those employees.
Our right to negotiate over staffing numbers comes from our CPP MOU in
Section 1.c. You can use this same
tact with your managers when negotiating a new watch schedule and wanting to
build in some extra lines.
The
installations have all been completed successfully.
I need feedback from FacReps, please.
An
election was held last month to find a successor for Marty Brown.
The bargaining unit members elected Rebecca Teborek.
We welcome her to the team and will get her any necessary training as
well as anything she might need in the short run.
Best wishes to Marty, we will miss him and all that he has done for us.
A
question was raised about the high number of supervisory levels at some of the
facilities. Boyle said he would
like to see it handled and agreed to at the facility level.
If however, when discussing this issue it would become necessary to
impasse then he indicated he and I would have to work the issue for the
facility. We realize this is a
position management issue, which may not be within our purview.
On the other hand, how it gets into a bargaining arena is because
management, at some facilities, continues to back-fill behind supervisors even
though they are operating with greatly reduced staffing levels.
It gets so ridiculous that you have a less than 6-to-1 ratio, of
supervisors to directly supervised employees, in some cases.
I won�t mention which facility is the most insidious but Darrell did a
nice job.
WTO
issue.
ATP-130
Special Operations in DC communicates directly with the US Secret Service.
They then coordinate with the region that included, Flight Standards and
Air Traffic. The region failed to
include anyone from FSS.
Tentatively,
and for planning purposes, our next meeting will be on Tuesday, March 14, 2000,
at MMV AFSS. At that time the team
will formally have the opportunity to meet, and get better aquatinted with,
Rebecca.
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