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United Negotiations–Week 12

Rich Delaney, June 22, 2009 —

Job security has been the focus of United negotiations over the past 2 weekly sessions. This has taken on several aspects, mainly the definitions of our jobs. The District 141 United Negotiation team is reviewing current job descriptions in our contracts and making sure that the work our Members are performing is reflected in that language. We want to make sure that as United looks at operational and technological changes, the work we are entitled to perform remains securely within the contract. In some parts of United negotiations, we are seeing that a full discussion between the company and the Union is enough to get an understanding of how our contract will apply and in other instances we are looking to add specific duties to Article IV.

UNITED NEGOTIATIONS TURNING TO FINANCIAL ISSUES
We expect that United negotiations will start to take on a more financial based focus beginning this week. With the help of our Grand Lodge Strategic Resources Dept. we will meet with United’s Financial Dept. to review and agree on how future calculations of the value of each proposal will be made. This is a necessary step to insure that both sides are looking at the cost of each proposal using the same formula and can make decisions based on the same information. We will return to contract discussions after the financial meeting has been completed.

OUTSIDE OF UNITED NEGOTIATIONS...
Job security has also been the issue outside direct United negotiations. Meetings between District 141 and United Airlines have been going on for the past few weeks concerning the company’s recent decisions to request bids from vendors to take over the UAX operation at ORD and their decision to remove mainline trips from STL. We have been working on both stations separately but with the same intent – retain the ground handling of UAX trips for IAM represented classifications. We have been included in all the same meetings the company has held with potential bidders and are, in fact, considered as one of the vendors. No decisions have yet been made in either case but we expect that final determinations will be made within the next 2 weeks. The potential of losing another line station, along with the possibility of losing hundreds of jobs in a hub, is a very serious concern of the Union. We realize United is not done making adjustments to their domestic schedule and mix of mainline/UAX operations.

SAFETY: AGREEMENT IN UNITED NEGOTIATIONS, REASON DIFFER
One aspect of United negotiations that have not been contentious is safety. We may have different reasons for being concerned with safety but ultimately both sides in United negotiations agree on the importance of doing everything we can to reduce the number and severity of personal injuries. To that end, we are working with United, through the established Safety Committees, to train IAM members in areas of working smarter and safer. In conjunction with the SOSAP reporting program these training programs will focus on understanding how and why injuries and accidents happen and how they can be reduced in the future, rather than simply looking at discipline as the response. As these programs are introduced in stations we are hopeful that our Members will see the value in them and participate fully.