All,
First off, here are some upcoming important dates:
July 20th is the last day to request EA to go to CFS, please follow the directions at CFS Registration
UNUM registration open until September 28th at UNUM Registration
Internet Outage 7/23
Saturday, 7/23 the internet will be out for the majority of the swingshift for some upgrades. After the upgrades are complete we will begin the process of switching to individual user accounts. More instruction to follow on that as Devin Carlisto and Matt Coughlin get it set up. Big thanks to them for all their hard work.
Solidarity Event
The cruise around Lake Washington could not have gone better. The weather was perfect, the food was great and bonding amongst the people from all the Seattle facilities was abundant. The primary objective of NATCA is obviously to protect and advance the working conditions of our members but there is a secondary mission and that is to create and strengthen an additional support structure for us to lean on in a stressful career with few parallels to the “normal” world. When we are able to put together these events for you all it helps us to build relationships that are helpful in our day to day lives. Thank you to all that attended and thank you to those at work during this event as well. If there is any interest in a holiday party, perhaps even in January, please let us know. We need volunteers to work on that too.
Masks are coming back…some places.
Look, here’s the thing, masks might be on their way back. The community transmission rate has been determined to be high enough for masks in several facilities in our region. This is determined by more than just case counts, hospitalizations and other factors go in to determining the transmission rate. You can read more about how it is determined here. We wanted to give you all a heads up because the trends are not in our favor. We have dodged it for now but we may not be able to for much longer and we want you to all understand the situation. If masks do come back here, please don’t mess around with it. Just put the mask on. We have seen several cases in our region already where controllers have decided to “take a stand” on masking and it is not going to go well for them. We can debate the efficacy of masking all we want, but if masks come back in our building, we will be having that debate with masks on. These folks that decide they want to not wear a mask when required are not “standing up for something” they are being insubordinate and will be charged as such. Trust me, the agency will absolutely relish the opportunity to start passing out suspensions like candy if you choose not to wear your mask. The MOU regarding masking does allow for Article 8 and ProStan to be used to address non-compliance before “initiating other compliance measures.” So that option will be available but if it doesn’t end with your mask going on then discipline will be next.
All that being said - we are still mask free. But we don’t know what the future holds and we want you all to be prepared.
In Solidarity,
Drew & Amy