Hey everybody! The minutes from the all members meeting last Saturday are below.
Chico
All Members Meeting 8/19/22 Rainbow Cafe
Start time: 3:32 PM Food: Appetizers provided by ZSE Natca Local
Attendance: Amy Sizemore (FacRep), Drew Stewart (VP), James “Chico” Eastham (Secretary), Matt Braunstein, Katrina Linder
Constitutional Amendments -
There are a couple changes to our local constitution. The first change is to make elections easier. It changes the start date for elected officials to January 1st rather than have it tied to the first day of the first pay period for that year. The second change removes the nomination window (August 1-15 currently) and changes it to a deadline. The election committee will set that deadline. There was a motion to accept these changes, and it passed unanimously.
Last Meeting’s Minutes -
There was a motion to adopt the minutes from the last meeting. The motion passes.
Construction -
There are a lot of scheduled construction projects for the building, but most of them have been postponed. They are going to replace the control room doors, repave the parking lot, build an ADA compliant walkway, among other things. They were postponed for now. There are also some very tentative early plans for changing out the kitchen area (former HTH Cafe) and making it more accessible and usable for everyone.
Safety Class -
There was a safety class recently that four people were able to attend. It went over things like QC and the LSC. There was some good information for our facility. We are going to try and get more official time for the LSC to do their work, instead of having them solely work during their free time.
Staffing -
All areas are pretty short at the moment. As of right now, the D-area is getting a transfer, the B-area is getting a new academy grad, the A-area is short but they currently don’t have the staffing to train any more new controllers, the C-area is also short and may get the next person in the building. If we get another NCEPT list we might be able to get one person from that.
Nearly every facility in the NAS is doing six day workweeks. Until ZSE is doing that, it could be tough to get more staffing. Staffing is being directed to those facilities that are working a lot of overtime. It is possible that they adjust our numbers down if they see our building working fine with the people we have. Some facilities are doing 25 min breaks and 5.5 hours TOP.
Nationally, FAA Finances are the ones who control staffing levels. Next September the FAA Reauthorization bill will be coming up, and NATCA is pushing to take controllers out of that. Pay is difficult to negotiate because federal employees are capped.
Dan wonders if the FAA has considered trying to change how they place new controllers and if NATCA could provide any input there. There seem to be so many that certify and then look to transfer. Unfortunately, NATCA doesn’t represent any of the new controllers at the academy, so they really can’t help with that.
Meeting Adjourned 4:21 PM