All,
Hopefully everyone is having a good week. Don’t forget the two events this week! My Half Christmas Cookout and the NEB meet and greet.
Half Christmas - Monday, June 24th @ 3pm at my house (more info in the link at the bottom)
NEB Meet and Greet - Tuesday, June 25th from 6-9pm at Virtual Sports in Tukwila. (Flyer above)
Alright, on to the update:
XTE vs RDO Swap vs Shift Change Request
There has been some confusion amongst the supes about what order to address XTE, RDO Swaps, and shift change requests. As they are all technically shift change requests, they are all addressed in the order received. This presents a challenge for the supervisors because the XTE requests are in a separate section on the webscheduler. There have been 2 instances over the last week of a supervisor approving credit onto a swing and then editing the shift back to a day ahead of someone requesting to go from the swing to the day. Lee agrees with me that that is not appropriate. I believe I got both issues addressed, but keep your eyes peeled for possible future instances of this.
In an effort to further clarify how I expect the supes to handle this, I will give an example.
Employee A is on an RDO
Employee B is on a scheduled 1500 with a request in to go to a 0800.
Employee A then subsequently requests XTE on a 0800 shift.
Employee A is in line behind Employee B in trying to get a day shift. Employee A’s 0800 cannot be approved without Employee B’s being approved first. Employee A may be offered an XTE 1500 shift to accommodate Employee B’s request but that is not a requirement for the supervisors to do. So be aware of this and know that we can help each other out a bit here. This type of thing has the potential to create many situations where Employee B is never going to get a 1500 to an 0800 but decides not to pass for Employee A and nobody gets their request approved. I know this type of thing can be pretty complicated so if I’ve done a poor job of explaining it and you have further questions, please let me know.
Red Sector Numbers
Does anyone have any objections to lowering our TSD numbers? By that I mean changing the point at which sectors go yellow/red. The purpose of having lower numbers would be to encourage the supes to actually look at the sectors as they go red. I know we often have a green sector that is completely down the shitter. We probably only need to lower them for 14 by itself and all the lows combined. I have also been told that this might help us to get more help from ZOA when we request it.
The recommendation made to me was:
14 only - Yellow at 12, Red at 14
Lows combined - Yellow at 10, Red at 12
Keep in mind that if you guys agree we should do this, it may still take some time to get it done. I am not sure what hoops I will need to jump through. If there are no objections then I will begin pursuing this this week.
Green Fix Posting Bay Headers
Our current fix posting bay headers have a bunch of holding information on them that may or may not even be accurate anymore due to changes in MIAs and other things over the years. Amy has been working to try to come up with the most efficient way for us to update those. After doing some research and asking around, here is what she and I both think are the best fix posting bay headers to use moving forward:
ACV, CEC, OED, OTH, LMT, RBG, LKV.
This will all have their respective ASOS frequencies on them (OED will have MFR and SIY) as well as OTH and LMT will have a section to write the current ATIS, runway in use, and approach advertised.
Click here to see what that would look like.
If you recommend doing anything different, please let me know ASAP. Without objections, I plan to move forward on replacing the fix posting bay headers next week.
That’s it for this week. Hope to see you all at the Half Christmas Cookout!
In Solidarity,
Drew