NEWSLETTER E-MAIL ADDRESS:
This issue of NAATS News represents a new approach to disseminating the Newsletter - We are providing a Word Formatted version online for downloading and printing:
(Plain DOC version ZIPped Version)
Please bear with us as we try to work out the bugs. Of course any and all comments are welcome.
Wally Pike, NAATS President
By all accounts the 2000 NAATS National Membership Meeting last week was a success. We had approximately 135 members in attendance and all were anxious to participate.
The three invited FAA management speakers all declined to attend so we used the time to talk about the many issues confronting our union. Of particular interest was the pay negotiations status and direction the NAATS Negotiating Team has taken.
The membership was briefed, in detail, on the history of the negotiations as well as our current status. We then discussed our team goal of "comparability". As previously discussed the entire issue centers on a 2152 series GS-12 controller making roughly the same in either the NATCA or the NAATS environment. The membership was unanimous in its support of the contract team and our determination to accept nothing less than comparability.
The NAATS Board of Directors business meeting was held prior to the national meeting and a significant decision was made to allocate resources to ensure a fair agreement is reached by whatever means necessary. I applaud the Board for its insight and courage in taking this step.
We meet with the management team and the mediators on December 12. We're fully prepared to reach agreement once the management team decides to treat us as air traffic controllers. Until that time we'll continue to explore and develop our other options.
Many other matters were discussed at the meetings last week. A report on these will be included in the next NAATS Quarterly Bulletin.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Wally
- From
- Don McLennan
November 13, 2000
This will be the last pay bulletin prior to NAATS beginning the process of mediation with the FAA. This is a serious step for the Union to be undertaking in as much as it high-lights the Agency's lack of willingness to negotiate in good faith and discharge their legal responsibilities under the law and fulfill the mandate of many Executive Orders dating back to the Kennedy era. This is not a step the Union takes lightly nor without tremendous thought or soul searching.
We never really believed that the FAA would pigeonhole us in the fashion they have chosen. For reasons we will likely never know the Agency has decided we are not truly deserving of participating in our mission as Air Traffic Controllers. We are not deserving of the benefits, as well as accepting the day-to-day accountability, of civil servants per-forming the duties associated with these responsibilities.
What I have heard more than anything else in the last year, from so many of you across the nation is undeniable. The ultimate slap in the face, from this administration, is that the unyielding duty to do our job, perceived by those in authority, does not deserve the same respect that we insure to our customer's welfare. We do this every day, in many ways, and at a personal risk, and still they feel this is undeserving of the same respect they have conceded to our bothers and sisters in different bargaining units. While I have often said, in print, that it is because they do not realize what we do for the Agency, it has none-the-less become intolerable. It is their responsibility in managing government, to insure people's safety, they must, in fact, understand what we do, how we do it and within what means we are able to accomplish our goals.
To that end I share with you the Union's intention's in the next round of engagements. We want to insure to all of you, working without thanks, without acknowledgment and without the appreciation of your management in Washington, that we will persevere to represent your views. We all perform a vital function in the smooth, safe and expeditious flow of air traffic across the nation. Simply because the administration is ignorant of this fact in no way justifies their remiss attitude that what you do for this country is not deserving of their attention.
To that end I would ask all of you to stand at the ready. To be prepared to take up the cause, be prepared to try and persuade those in authority in government that we are deserving of the same treatment the FAA has already given other Air Traffic Controllers they have deemed deserving of their good favor. I ask this not lightly and not in any way because the processes of government have broken down. I only want to insure that you know your management has completely failed to acknowledge you for what you do on a day by day basis for the welfare and safety of the flying public.
I do not normally write these types of bulletins and it is with no satisfaction that I send you this message. It is only because the Union has not been able, in the many months of negotiations, to overcome the administrations bigoted attitude toward our bargaining unit and their mistaken belief that we are not Air Traffic Controllers. I do not enjoy sharing this view with you, in a public forum. However, it is long past time to fail to openly admit that we are still treated as second class citizens not deserving of the respect and admiration we reserve, every day for our customers. You all have my personal, unyielding gratitude, as a private pilot, for all the assistance and security you have provided me in my many years of flying. Here is hoping someone wakes up the administration to your role and accomplishments within the FAA.
- Christopher G. Klemm
- Director of Labor Relations
Dignity and Respect in the workplace
I would like to take this opportunity to brief everyone on the status of arbitrations and unfair labor practices at the national level. I have three grievances scheduled to go to arbitration and one unfair labor practice set to go to hearing. The first grievance for arbitration is scheduled for December 5, 2000 in Houston, Texas. This grievance revolves around whether discipline was given for just cause. The grievant has been employed with the Federal Aviation Administration for many years with no prior disciplinary problems. The manager gave this employee a 5 day suspension, which was the high-est option for a first time offense. It is the unions position that not only was the discipline not for just cause, but a five day suspension is extremely harsh for the level of offense that management is accusing that the grievant did.
The second grievance scheduled for arbitration will be on January 11, 2001. This arbitration will be held at the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, D.C. As a reminder, it concerns the agency's hiring 125 new employees in the Flight Service Option. The issue is the FAA failed to notify and negotiate this action as required by the November 1994 CPP MOU.
The third grievance scheduled for arbitration will be on January 24, 2001. This arbitration will be held in Fort Worth, Texas and it concerns whether the FAA violated the collective bargaining agreement regarding seniority for temporary assignments.
The unfair labor practice charge that our New England Region filed against the agency is scheduled to go to hearing for January 9, 2001 in New York City, New York. We are scheduled to have a telephone conference with Federal Labor Relations Authority on January 2, 2001 to hopefully resolve the issue before we go to the hearing the following week. However, it appears that management has no interest in resolving this issue and their position is that what the manager did at the Bridgeport, Connecticut facility was correct. The charge revolves around a past practice that continued for a number of years at this facility and when the manager wanted to change this past practice, he never negotiated with the union.
I recently returned from an arbitration case in Gainesville, Florida. David Hoover, Craig Campbell, and myself handled the arbitration for NAATS. David and Craig did an excellent job in preparing and organizing the case for arbitration. This was another disciplinary case and management had the burden to prove there was just cause to warrant a 5 day suspension. The two grievants had no prior disciplinary history and demonstrated great working characteristics as apparent through their performance appraisals. Similar to the first case, the manager believed the grievants violated a facility policy and de-served a five day suspension. The manager's range for discipline was from a letter of reprimand to five days. We believe the arbitrator will find that the two employees did nothing wrong and were disciplined not for just cause. We are currently working on post-hearing briefs for the case and we will notify the membership once we receive the decision from the arbitrator.
Finally, we have many other pending grievances that may go to arbitration and I will inform everyone as these grievances move on in the arbitration process. I hope all union brothers and sisters of NAATS are making sure management is doing what they are supposed to be doing and you should ask for nothing less than dignity and respect in your workplace.
- Jeff Barnes
- OASIS Representative
As you may have heard, the evaluation of the OASIS system at Seattle was recently re-leased by the Independent Operational Test & Evaluation (IOT&E) Team. This Team is an independent group whose task is to conduct an evaluation of new NAS systems looking at operational suitability. Several NAATS members were on the Team. To boil it down to its barest result, the TEAM concluded that the OASIS is not suitable for operations in the AFSS. Having said that, I need to clarify what it means to us.
The report identifies issues and ranks them according to the importance the IOT&E Team placed on them. By my first cut at it, the Team identified two issues they placed in the "High" category, one one issue they identified as "Medium" for SEA with the potential to slip to "high" for further deployments, nineteen were identified as "Medium" criticality, and thirteen that were placed at "Low" criticality.
These issues were well known within the program. The single surprise was regarding SAR which was one of the two "Highs". The issues raised are good ones that do need the attention that the IOT&E has brought to them. I will go a step further and say that there are still a large number of issues that need to be resolved that the Team did not address. That effort is underway at this time by the Human Factors Team and the pro-gram.
What impact does the IOT&E report have on the OASIS program? At this time the specialists at Seattle stand behind the OASIS system and do not want to fall back on M1FC operations. NAATS is working to support that position. At this time the system is being evaluated for liability issues and implications. If the Agency decides that use of OASIS imposes extra liability on the Agency then SEA will revert to M1FC operations until the issues causing that liability are resolved. In the absence of increased liability SEA will continue using OASIS operationally.
This is a strange situation because this is a system that has been designated unsuitable, yet the specialists using it want to keep using it. That desire is known and under-stood in headquarters, even by ATQ (The IOT&E organization). At headquarters they are analyzing the report to determine what can be done to address the two "Highs" and some subset of the "Mediums" in as short a time frame as possible so that the major problems can be satisfactorily resolved to relieve some of the pressure on the program. Having said that, none of the issues will be ignored.
Responding to the IOT&E report has taken up a large chunk of the program's time recently, but work continues in other areas. We recently had a Human Factors Team meeting at Harris to work on weather graphics. We have been shooting for equaling the graphics available in WSI right now. We are well on our way, but I hope to take us be-yond that limitation. There is a possibility of getting our charts directly from the National Weather Service.
The nice thing about that is that our current graphics and those currently being produced by the OASIS are not certified. If our graphics were produced by the NWS then they would be certified and legally useable to brief off of. A person from the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) indicated a willingness to work with us to produce what we want (not surprising that most of there funding comes from the FAA). However...and this is significant...it would take agreement and coordination at high levels between the FAA and the NWS. While the FAA is slow, the NWS is positively glacial when it comes to administrative decision-making. So while it will hopefully come to pass no one should be holding their breath. In the meantime we continue to work to make the Harris-supplied OASIS graphics the best we can.
A couple notes of interest from our trip to Harris. I had already reported that the first new hire to the OASIS program was a meteorologist. They hired another programmer who was also a meteorologist. Also, Linda Rose, the Lead Software Engineer quit to raise her new baby, so she was replaced. Harris chose Ken Bath who comes to OASIS from the WARP (Weather And Radar Processor) program. He is also a programmer /meteorologist. So we now have three people on the program at Harris with strong weather backgrounds. People we an talk to about our job who don't get lost when we start getting into details. I have high expectations for Harris for the future.
Last week there was an Acquisition Review at headquarters for Weather and Flight Ser-vice systems. This is a briefing for high level representatives of the various lines of business. I was stunned to walk in the room and find placards for NATCA and PASS at the table, but not a spot for NAATS. At a review that actuality includes Flight Service in its title! Bill Dolan and I expressed our displeasure and an embarrassed Agency invited NAATS to sit at the table. Hopefully that will be the last of that kind of blunder, but if you go by past practice... I am pleased to report though that the head of acquisitions and research (Steve Zaidman) was keenly interested in NAATS perceptions and issues. He looked to us for our input on all issues that were discussed related to OASIS. We discussed strategies for future improvements and upgrades to the system since anything put into the Pre-Planned Product Improvement (P3I) category automatically gets chopped out of the budget nearly 100 percent of the time.
The question I have started asking recently is why are we limiting ourselves to trying to replace M1FC functionality on a one for one basis? If this is the system that is supposed to take Flight Service into the future, why aren't we looking at that future? We have been thinking in the box too much. It's time to explore what we can do to take a step forward when we deploy OASIS, not a step sideways. I'm not advocating that we try and rein-vent the wheel. I feel that we should be looking at enhancing the tools available to the specialist. Give him or her access to the tools that will bring the job into the 21st century, not stuck back in the 60's, 70's or even 80's. Only time will tell what kind of success I can have with that message, however I have seen some signs of hope in the reactions I have gotten to it within the agency. The people I work with have a genuine interest in the prosperity of Flight Service.
However, the we will continue working to turn that system to our advantage wherever possible.