June 30, 2025

Participants for AMFA
Bret Oestreich – National President
Lee Seham – Acting Committee Chair
Joel Moores – Airline Representative
Craig Clouter – Negotiator-at-Large
Samuel Seham – Legal Counsel

Participants for JTS
Kirk Newhook – VP Employee Relations
Suzanne Asseff – Director, Employee Relations
Kal Rebin – VP Maintenance
Steve Tully – Director, MRO
Maze Hobeyn – Director, Components & Stores
Stephen Boa – Manager, Labour Relations
Kris Langevin – Manager Labour Relations 
Christine Stolarz – Employee Relations Admin/Analyst 

The AMFA-JTS Negotiating Committee (the “Committee”) is providing this update to the membership at Jazz Technical Services (JTS). This is the only official source of negotiating communications.

On June 24-26, 2025, Jazz and AMFA representatives met in Toronto, ON, for collective agreement negotiations. The negotiations were led by AMFA General Counsel Lee Seham and Jazz VP Employee Relations Kirk Newhook. During this session, rank-and-file observers sat in on the negotiations and contributed valuable information during Committee caucuses.

Building on the progress made by the Jazz Line Negotiating Committee during negotiations on June 23-24, the JTS Committee reached tentative agreements on two additional contract articles so that the following nine (9) of the twenty-one (21) articles in the existing collective agreement have been TA’d. [1]:

Article 1 – Purpose of Agreement and Definitions
Article 3 – Management’s Rights
Article 9 – Probation
Article 12 – Transfers and Filling of Vacancies
Article 16 – Grievance Procedure, Arbitration, Discipline, Suspension, Discharge
Article 17 – Health and Safety
Article 18 – Union-Management Communications
Article 20 – Check-Off
Article 21 – Duration

The newly TA’d Article 21 removes the automatic contract renewal language with the Company and AMFA both inclined, at this time, to pursue a three-year agreement.

The newly TA’d Article 16 - Grievance Procedure, Arbitration, Discipline, Suspension, Discharge provides for tangible improvements, including:

• Letters of Expectation and all disciplinary letters will be removed from an employee’s personnel record after one (1) year unless they involve rescinded terminations, suspensions, or warnings for incidents involving aircraft/property damage or personal injury, in which case they will be removed in two (2) years;
• An employee will be given advance notice of the allegations against him/her prior to any disciplinary investigative hearing; and,
• The Union obtained the contractual right to have written transcripts taken at arbitration hearings.

Since arbitration hearings may determine important contractual and statutory rights for our members, AMFA pressed hard for the adoption of this last provision. Although keeping such transcripts is standard practice in the U.S. airline industry, no other airline contract that the Committee has reviewed contains such a provision. Consequently, the Company only agreed to written transcripts with two provisos: (a) that the arbitrator had the right to object to the keeping of transcripts, and (b) the Company retains the right to rescind the provision after two years or three arbitrations, whichever comes later. The Committee agreed to these limitations in order to obtain this new benefit to close out the article and move into articles addressing economics and job security.

Your Committee additionally submitted to the Company its proposals for the following articles:

Article 4 – Scope of Agreement, Classifications and Positions
Article 7 – Overtime
Article 8 – Relief and Special Assignments
Article 11 – Leaves of Absence and Sick Leave
Article 13 – Statutory Holidays
Article 19 – General

To date, the Company has generally declined to respond to economic components in the above articles until such time as the entirety of the Union economic proposal is on the table. One notable exception is that the Company has agreed to remove from Article 19’s pension provisions the lower accrual rate for employees hired after the date of ratification (DOR) of the 2015 agreement.

Stay engaged, remain informed, and continue to support the Negotiating Committee as that support increases the ability to bargain a collective agreement that your hard work deserves. Your AMFA representatives will provide regular updates throughout the negotiating process. Thank you for your support.

Fraternally,

AMFA-JTS Negotiating Committee