All,
Hope everyone is having a good week. I have a few quick things to update you on this week.
Article 46 (Realignment of Workforce)
As I am sure you have heard by now (and Derek mentioned in his email as well) mgmt is pursuing an Article 46 realignment that would ultimately pull 1 controller from the C Area and 1 from the D Area. This would be our junior most CPC (MW) if there are no volunteers. However, the contract requires this to be a facility wide solicitation so the A Area would be involved as well. If someone from the A area volunteered then it is possible that the agency would force someone to the A area instead. It is all very messy. We have talked about this a lot as an eboard and we all agree that the B area is hurting but this is just not the right answer. There are many steps that could be taken prior to this that have not been. However, it is a contractual right for the agency. We will continue to do our best to prove to them that this would do more harm than good and hope that they can be shown reason.
As you would expect, this has really thrown a giant wrench into our schedule for next year so just remember that. It has gotten worse since the last time I said it was bad. We are doing the best we can with what we have though.
SEA Metering
Our metering set up is not ideal. We are put in situations where we turn aircraft all over the sky just to hand them off to the B area for them to do the same. Until we get something changed with that process I have two recommendations that you can listen to or not. First is, try sending aircraft back to BLYTZ in Sector 13 and KNGDM in Sector 14 and see if it works for you. I have been doing it and I like it. It helps eat more delay and it also helps the B Area get them all in roughly the same spot. There are published holds at those fixes as well so in the even we go into holding, that would help out a lot. Not a requirement, just a thought.
The other thing we can do to help out is when we do clear aircraft back on course after hitting our meter times is to maybe let the aircraft know that there will likely be delay on the next frequency as well so they can be preparing for it. Again…not a requirement, just something that might help the B Area out in dealing with the whiners.
BLYTZ/KNGDM Routing from ZOA
So we finally have Randy Vincent working on this with us. Apparently there is concern that ZLA would start routing aircraft direct BLYTZ and KNGDM and that would mess with the flow of recently redesigned sectors in ZOA. I do not understand how that is an issue, but nevertheless, our TMO is in contact with their TMO and the ball continues to slowly roll along. Hopefully we hear something soon.
Sector Red Numbers
Sector 14’s “alert parameter” otherwise known as the number that makes it go red will be lowered to 15 at some point next week. We will try that out and see what we think and maybe go 1 lower if we feel like we need it.
I just want to close with a request from you all. If a Supe wants to pull you into the office and have a discussion about anything, please do not hesitate to ask for a rep. They really should be offering you one but that doesn’t always happen. The rule is that if the employee reasonably believes that discipline may result from the meeting then a rep must be provided. So that threshold is entirely up to you to determine. I am more than happy to go into any meeting with you.
That’s it for now.
In Solidarity,
Drew