Today a new MOU was dropped regarding vaccinations. It is in your CEDAR but we will link it here too. We know that people have different thoughts, experiences and reasons for their choices during the pandemic and we are not here to debate or judge any of those because it comes down to one thing, this is an executive order. While NATCA does support it, it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t. We don’t get a choice on if this goes into effect but we can influence the implementation of an executive order.
FAA COVID-19 Vaccine Operational Incentive Strategy MOU
A little background to how they came up with these numbers:
The executive order states that federal employees will be fully vaccinated (14 days past your second dose) by November 22. That means that if you are absolutely timing this out down to the wire (for the Pfizer vaccine) then you must get the first dose by October 18th so the second one will be on November 8th. That is not enough time to get every unvaccinated person 32 hours of EA. That is why they migrated to the time off award.
Initially, NATCA negotiated for all employees to be eligible for up to 16 hours of EA for each dose of the vaccine. That is a total of 32 hours. Most BUEs were able to take advantage of that. The new MOU will provide you with an 8 hour time off award which will bring that up to 40 hours of time off work to get that shot.
Things to note:
To be eligible for the 20 hours of EA per dose of the vaccine then you must do it over your RDOs (on your Friday) and you must show proof of vaccination to your supervisor within 5 days. If you have OT then it will be cancelled for that set of RDOs.
To be eligible for your 8 hours of EA then you must show your proof of vaccination to your supervisor.
Still no word on any exemptions.
Does not apply to management, they still have to comply with the EO but without the TOA
We know there will be a lot of questions so please do not hesitate to ask. We are trying to get this info out as quickly as possible so we might’ve missed something to get out to you all.
Amy Sizemore and Drew Stewart