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3.31.07 PDF Print E-mail
This is Leslie Mayo, National Communications Coordinator, with the APFA Hotline for Saturday, March 31, 2007.

APFA ALERT: If you have not yet received your letter from APFA containing several items that address the upcoming Executive Bonuses, send an email to: member@apfa.org, with the subject line: “please send member letter contents.” Include your name, employee number, address and phone number and one will be sent to you immediately. This bagtag and insert is a show of unity to each other, to our fellow unions on the property and especially to AA senior management that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. 874 “elite” employees of American Airlines will be reaping the rewards of all our hard work by divvying up hundreds of millions of dollars in stock. While everyone else is still in shared sacrifice mode, 874 members of management are the only ones sharing in the rewards this year. This is not okay. Stay close to your home or cell phones early next week and continue to check the Web site for more information and details on the upcoming lawful events APFA has planned. On a side note: It is important that not a single member of our union participates in anything other than approved APFA events. So far, the nature of our events and the dates of these events have not yet been announced. Despite what you may be hearing on the line, it is important that you only participate in APFA-sanctioned activities as protected by the Railway Labor Act. Stay tuned to apfa.org and click on the Executive Bonuses link for upcoming details as they are announced in the coming weeks. This link also contains copies of AA propaganda that attempts to justify the awarding of bonuses to the tune of $200 million total to the 874, as well as bagtags inserts to download and print, a full-sized pulling together cartoon, and more.

One week ago, we reported that a little over 13,000 responses had been registered at apfa.org to our public poll question asking exactly where $200 million in bonuses SHOULD be spent. During the past week 4,000 more votes were cast and the number of those electing to share the money with ALL employees who have sacrificed since 2003 has increased to 16,243. Oddly enough, 411 people have elected to keep as is – to be divided among 800+ “elite” members of management. In this public poll not restricted to APFA members, it’s difficult to imagine a single person outside of those already set to receive this windfall of stock selecting that option. This leaves us all to wonder when the remaining 363 will take the time to visit apfa.org and follow suit. Moving on, 391 people said they would buy new aircraft, 259 would fund our pensions further, 246 want new FA uniforms, 113 would clean the aircraft with that money and 15 chose to build new Admiral’s Clubs.

Thousands of you participated in the other poll question asking what you think the bonus award value increase from 2002 to 2007 for the top five AMR Executives would be. The correct answer received 92% of the responses. In 2002, the top five AMR Executives divvied up $3,777,325 in bonuses. This year, the top five AMR Executives will be taking home seven times that amount – about $25,000,000 depending upon the stock price on April 18th. Another poll question will be uploaded shortly. Stay tuned!

A reminder email was sent on Thursday to those of you that have email addresses on file with APFA and have not yet filled out the Online Membership opinion survey being conducted by the University of North Texas Survey Research Center (SRC). Please take ten minutes to register your responses to this important questionnaire. This is the fourth membership opinion survey of this administration and it is designed to help formulate the position APFA will take with AMR, on the Hill and at the Bargaining Table in 2008. All individual results will remain confidential and only percentages of each response will be made available to the APFA Leadership. Keep in mind that even though you are able to visit the survey site more than once, only your first response will be recorded.

AMR CEO Gerard Arpey, Bill Quinn, the CEO of Beacon Fund Advisors, and a few other members of management traveled to New York to accept the “Plan Sponsor of the Year” award for AA’s efforts on behalf of Pension Reform. Although Mr. Quinn acknowledged the “different path” AA took to continue to offer defined benefit plans to its employees, management missed yet another opportunity to recognize that this hard work would not have come about without the partnership of all groups who participated to protect our pensions on Capitol Hill. APFA would like to once again honor the hard work of IDF Flight Attendant Patrick Hancock, former APFA Retirement Specialist Jill Frank (now retired) and APFA’s lobbyist on the Hill Joan Wages as well as leaders of APA and TWU for the work they performed on behalf of AA’s defined pension plan via the Pension Reform Act of 2006. APFA would especially like to thank our members for taking part in this successful effort. Unfortunately, AA misses many opportunities to share in the improvements gained from working together, as evidenced by the one percent of AA employees set to reap the rewards of the efforts of each one of us on April 18, 2007. Will they ever learn their lesson?

From the APFA Archives: APFA continues to actively search for a flight attendant who is interested in working part-time in the APFA Archives. An article contained in the next issue of Skyword includes details of the position. Cilla Golas (IDF) will retire from her position as APFA Archivist in June. She was APFA’s first archivist and has done our Union proud. If you are interested, please contact Cilla at archivist@apfa.org for more information.

From the APFA Scheduling Department: Based on APFA’s concerns that Reassignments were not being proffered in seniority-order, AA has agreed to test a procedure which APFA believes honors the seniority of the crewmembers. While APFA feels that this is a contractual right, AA does not agree. AA will test these modified procedures beginning April 1, 2007. Visit the APFA Web site on Monday – Scheduling Department for details of this procedure. Keep in mind that it is the FA’s responsibility to respond to Crew Tracking if the senior Flight Attendant intends to claim the Reassignment. Contact will be handled like MakeUp. Once Crew Tracking makes the call, s/he continues down the list until s/he makes contact. If the trip is claimed by another FA before you respond, the trip will not be re-proffered.

From the Contract Department: Also, based on APFA’s and our members’ concerns over the expansion of “Food for Sale” at the beginning of this year, APFA has met with the Company in an effort to address the issues that resulted in an inreased workload. As a result of these discussions, the Company has agreed to make several changes to procedures that were announced earlier this month. On March 15th, the requirement to complete two services changed from 2:30 flying time to 3 hours of flying time. Also, it is now OPTIONAL to perform a pick-up service with a cart (re-offering coffee, juice and water). The Company has nearly completed the placement of menu cards in seatback pockets that list all items for sale. This should drastically reduce the amount of time spent repeating items for sale. Thank you for all your feedback regarding onboard workload. APFA requests your continued responses and all suggestions regarding these changes to contract@apfa.org.

As we stated on last week’s Hotline, the Company has agreed to enhanced procedures for processing Domestic Mutual Transfers. Visit the APFA Web site - Contract Department for details. In addition to the current procedures the company will add a group of alternate, or ‘buffer’ Flight Attendants to serve as back-ups should someone more senior on the mutual transfer pool not accept the opportunity to transfer. Flight Attendants appearing as alternates on the list are not in the actual pairing pool, rather they will be paired only if an imbalance occurred as a result of FA responses included in the original pairings. Those listed as alternates should respond by the preliminary-posting deadline should their seniority be reached. Hopefully, this new procedure will result in a successful pairing for all mutual transfers in order to facilitate allowing a maximum number of our members to transfer to their desired bases. Don’t forget to update your transfer requests in SABRE in the event you do not wish to be paired or transfer so that those junior to you will be able to participate.

Also, don't forget to check your HI10 for the finalized Secondary Vacation Awards. If you would like to trade your vacation, please visit the FA Vacation Trade Board at apfa.org and fill out the form to submit a request for trade.

From the Health Department: If you live if the Chicago area and are being adversely affected by the Adventist contract negotiations please sen an email to David Levine, Managing Director for Human Resources at david.levine@aa.com and copy in the APFA at health@apfa.org. Include details such as whether you have been financially harmed by paying out of pocket for services, or a higher percentage due to the “usual and prevailing” clause, or if you have a serious health condition that needs continuation of coverage. APFA is trying to assist as much as possible, but AA Human Resources needs to hear from you so that they are convinced that the Adventist contract negotiations is not just impacting a small number of AA employees.

From the Hotel Department: A contract has been signed with our CDG hotel for another year. The hotel has advised us that our crews will be returning to that hotel on April 29th due to continued construction.

Please comply with all posted signs regarding the use of crew rooms at our layover hotels. For example, the LHR long-layover hotel has advised us that the use of the crew room may be restricted to only those who are waiting to check-in as a result of posted signs not being adhered to.

Two more of our layover hotels have gone non-smoking. Our Aruba layover hotel now prohibits smoking everywhere except for inside the casino. Also, our GRU long-layover hotel will only allow smoking in its lobby lounge effective April 7, 2007. Personal cleaning charges may apply if the non-smoking policy is violated.

Please remember that we still have 2,366 Flight Attendants on furlough.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for calling the APFA Hotline.
 
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