Participants for AMFA: Earl Clark – Region I Director
Michael Nelson – Region II Director Bob Cramer – Local 4 Airline Representative
Matt Townsend – Local 11 Airline Representative
Shane Flachman – Local 18 Airline Representative
Mike Young – Local 32 Airline Representative
Lucas Middlebrook – AMFA Counsel
Participants for Southwest Airlines:
Mike Ryan –VP, Labor Relations
Jim Sokol - VP, Maintenance Operations
Gerry Anderson- Sr Director Labor Relations
Michelle Jordon – Director, Labor Relations Mark Lyon – Sr Manager, Labor Relations Sam Moser - Manager, Financial Planning
The Negotiating Committee is providing this update to the AMFA membership at Southwest Airlines. This report is the only official authorized source of negotiating communications by the Committee.
We met for half day on Monday, September 9, 2013. The Company notified us they wanted to discuss a few issues with the Technical Instructors job classification language we crafted during our last session. The Company brought in Elizabeth Bryant and Jim Sturgis for the first time so we could work directly with the people who have been shooting down our proposals. We spent the afternoon discussing the Company’s concerns in regards to the Instructors job description and how they are to work with the Corporate Training Department. We are happy to report that after spending seven (7) sessions on this issue, we have finally TA’d this item. Now that the Instructors language has been TA’d, the Technical Mechanics are the last group that we have to add to Article 4, although we have not yet begun that discussion.
On Tuesday we notified the Company that we wanted to table Article 8, Field Service. We are committed to working through this issue, but the Committee agrees that we are too far apart at this time for any effective discussions. We also notified the Company that we needed to make some changes to Article 22 related to ensuring we do not run into any legal issues with a time line provision that the Company wants to insert.
We also gave the Company our Article 9 proposal which included longer recall rights and temporary Supervisor limit adjustments. The remainder of the session we worked on Article 21, specifically language in paragraph 2(b) related to “fact finding meetings” and creating “mutual discovery” language. We are trying to clearly detail the fact finding process to ensure all the pertinent information is shared at these meetings.
We have offered more dates throughout the remainder of the year and the Company has accepted October 21, 22 and November 18, 19. Three of our locals are conducting Airline Representative elections so we have to wait for the elections to be completed before we can work on 2014 negotiation dates.
We would like to thank Technical Instructor SMEs Robert Geisheimer and Tucker Steele for their input and help getting us through their Article 4 language. We would also like to thank J.D. Stallcup and Doug Umberson who were Observers for our Tuesday session. Next Mechanic Negotiations scheduled for October 21and 22.
Our side continues to be committed to making a concerted effort to reach an agreement that addresses our members’, and the Company’s, concerns. Our Committee would like to thank the observer that took the time to attend.