As you know, everything about this virus has put our world in a constant state of change. Last week, we announced a four hour recall period for your “on call” EA days. The reality is that just doesn’t work for the day and the swing so that has changed a little. Again, this does not apply to your full five days of EA when we transition to the five and five schedule.
The recall time for the mid will remain at four hours prior to the shift start time.
The recall time for the day and the swing will be up to the start time of what would have been your assigned shift. We also agreed that if someone is called just prior to their shift start they need to make reasonable effort to get there as soon as possible. If you find yourself with an obligation that prevents you from getting there within a reasonable time such as childcare, please let the OM or supervisor know and then make every effort to get there as soon as you can.
The OMIC will have the ability to recall an employee, but a recall should not be the first course of action. Other mitigations should be considered prior to recall (shorter breaks, moving sups around, etc.)
If at any time the recall procedures are not working out for either party, we will sit down and renegotiate to figure out something that will work.
We spoke about this in our last update, but we just want to reiterate that this is a very delicate situation. We cannot mess around with any of this. If you are on recall, please answer your phone. Remember that these are our co-workers and our brothers and sisters pulling the weight to make dynamic scheduling work. We are doing an unbelievable job in looking out for each other. Please keep it up and hopefully we make it through this pandemic in good health but also pride in knowing the sacrifices we made to keep ourselves and our NATCA family safe.
During the negotiations for recall, we also discussed some contingencies for bid leave, NPTL and spot leave.
If someone is choosing to take bid leave during their days on, they will have the option to take leave on what would have been their RDOs if we were on normal schedules.
If someone is taking bid leave and normally you would have one person on EA, the bid leave will supersede someone being on EA.
If employees cancel bid leave because of the 5/5 schedule, we agreed that upon negotiations to return to normal bid schedules, the leave books will immediately take effect again. We want to ensure that you feel comfortable giving your leave back due to 5/5 scheduling while still having assurances that you will still have your leave opportunity when life begins to normalize.
If you know you have a particular day you need off, please try to get that request in prior to publication. The schedulers and area reps are continuing to work very hard to make this schedule function as painlessly as they can. As far as spot leave, once a schedule is published, the “on call” EA is going to be published as approved. If you have a spot leave request it will fall in line after the “on call” EA. Please work with your crew to accommodate spot leave requests. There is nothing preventing us from trading days of EA and furthermore, if it’s something you want guaranteed, there is nothing preventing us from changing EA to AL to avoid recall. As mentioned before, this thing is working because we are willing to make it work and take care of each other.
Some of this might be a little confusing, if you have questions, please let us know. Thank you for your understanding while the Eboard works through these changes together.
Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore