Here are the lines for the 2021 bid. I apologize because I didn’t realize they weren’t accessible BidATC yet. I don’t have a definitive date on when we will start bidding but it should be the week of the 18th. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Pay period 24 was just published yesterday. This is the pay period that we lose Stephanie and Emma. Due to losing both of them, I had to move people around for coverage. From here on out, there will be times that we won’t be able to rotate back and forth from day to swing to day. Please just double check in WMT to see what you are scheduled for. There might also be a time where you are scheduled to work a shift by yourself. If you are working a shift by yourself, please time your breaks during a slow period so you can forward the phones to the OM. If you absolutely need to call in sick for whatever reason, please follow that up with a call to either myself or Vaden so we can try and figure something out. And since almost all of the shifts now only have 2 people on them, if you have to call in sick, please also notify the other person on your shift so they have a heads up that they will be by themselves. Honestly at this point, we are just trying to get through the rest of this year. If we are forced back to BWS, someone will get forced off their bid line to balance the schedule. I’ve been really fighting against this especially coming in to the holidays.
We are in the process of working out for some trainees to come back to resume training. For us the first one back will be Dan. Once the training department is able to accept students, Jeff Drasin from SEA will start. The plan is for him to be in the training department for approximately 3 weeks before heading to the A area to get his minimums on 2 d-sides. He will start in TMU as soon as that is finished. It will be crazy for us to have 3 students training all at once when we are at our lowest staffing numbers. But we need to train our way out of our staffing issues. We are all going to have to do our part and help with training.
As Derek said in his email, we should start bidding the week of October 18th. This bid for us will be quite interesting. We will be bidding a 9 line bid, almost identical to the one we bid this year, with the exception of the Saturday 10 will now be an 8. After discussing things with Derek and Randy, we have determined that, while not ideal, Dan and Jeff will need to bid with the rest of us. The reason behind that is the MOUs that were required to be rolled over from this year, state that if trainees bid trainee lines, they can bid up to 2 leave slots per day. That could potentially leave us with 3 people bidding the same day later in the year. We thought that covering their lines for the first part of the year was the lesser of two evils.
We will be bidding via BidATC again this year. It seemed to go very smoothly for us last time. All your info from last year will remain the same. If your email address or phone number changed, please update it so you will receive the notification when it is your turn to bid. If you have any issues updating it, please let me know and I can try. The site is still in “test mode” so I’m not sure how much you can see but I will be uploading the bid soon so you can take a look. If for some reason its not showing up, let me know.
I know there are a lot of changes going on right now and some of them are not ideal. I’m really hoping that this is the worst of it and it has to get better from here. Along with the current trainees, we also have Eric Garner (the other Eric) joining us in late February and I just found out about Jared Baxter (from Huntsville) joining us in the middle of March. There is a possibility by next summer we might actually have some staffing.
As always, I really appreciate everyone’s patience through all of this. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Just echoing Derek’s update, we will be transitioning to 5 on 5 off starting May 28th. This falls partway through pay period 12, at the end of crew 3’s 5 day rotation. Basically we split crew 2 up and now we have 2 total crews with 3 on the day and 3 on the swing. Derek also mentioned that we will be able to accommodate additional admin days during your 5 day rotation. Vaden and I will be going through to determine what that will look like. But I can’t stress this enough, if you are put on an additional admin day during your 5 day rotation, it is imperative that you know that you are 100% recallable and you need to answer your phone in the event you are called in. I guarantee as soon as someone doesn’t come in on a recallable shift, it will be taken away. Once we come up with who gets what day(s) in their 5 day rotation as a recallable admin day, we will let you know.
Also, I have reached out to some of you already regarding bid leave and if you still wanted it before we found out that we are going to 5 on 5 off. If something has changed and you still want your leave or don’t want your leave, please let myself or Vaden know so we can make the proper adjustments.
I truly appreciate everyone’s understanding and flexibility with all these changes we have been dealing with. I know its not easy to have things change around so much. Please as always don’t hesitate to reach out it you need anything.
With crew 3 taking over today, we have almost made it through a second rotation of our reduced schedules. Its weird not seeing most of you anymore. I haven’t really heard from anyone so I hope everyone is doing well and things are going smoothly. The only change I have to let you guys know about is everyone that is working will now be getting night differential pay for 4 of our admin shifts per pay period. If you see in your shift history, it will show that you are changed from admin to either a 0600 or 1400 and then changed to WX. That is the coding they are using to track shifts for COVID-19. If you click on schedule view under the views tab on WMT, you can then click on your WX shifts to see the shift history of admin shifts being changed to a 0600 or 1400 and then to WX code. I’ve tried my best to make sure I got everyone four 1400 shifts per pay period but please let me know if I missed something.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or if any issues come up. I hope everyone is staying safe and enjoying their extra time off.
I just wanted to take a minute to thank everyone for their patience with the lack of info that we’ve been getting. I, as well as the rest of the e-board, have been very frustrated with the lack of information coming down from management. With schools, sporting events, vacations (like my Disney cruise) all being cancelled and closed, it all feels like things are crumbling down. First of all, I want to reiterate what Derek said in his email, please take care of yourselves and your families. If you are sick, stay home. If you think you or someone in your family has COVID-19, just take the sick leave and we will get it figured out in the end (whether its EA or advanced SL). In the meantime, lets do our part to take care of each other at work. We have a couple containers of Clorox wipes and I have more that I can bring in if we run low until the facility gets more. Use them to wipe down your work station when you take the position and use hand sanitizer. Even though we might be healthy, we owe it to those who have loved ones at home that may not be able to fight this off. Please lets take care of each other. If you need anything, please let me know.
There is a hot sheet out that goes over our new military airspace procedures for NUW airspace (excluding Boardman). This will be quite a bit different from how we do business now but it should simplify the MC position as well as eliminate a lot of calls throughout the day. With all changes there will be some growing pains. Please be patient with the changes and give us feedback if something isn’t working or if you have ideas on how to improve anything.
Next week we will attend briefings on the new LOAs with NUW. Some of the new items will be Downrigger (the MRU) procedures, no longer dealing with MARSA or event numbers, and a change to the airspace on the east side. It is important that we all make this briefing so if there is no STMC, please try your best to make sure we are getting people out to go.
Lastly, I would like to develop training checklists for the various positions. We are going to be having more trainees soon and I think this would be beneficial for the trainees and the OJTIs. We are going to have clipboards on flow and military so that we can all work together on this project. If you think of something that should be on the checklist, please jot it down on the appropriate clipboard. I’m hoping that getting everyone involved, we will have a better list of things we feel trainees should learn before they are signed off. I will leave them out for a few weeks and then compile them into checklists. I really appreciate everyone’s help with this.
Thank you again for all you guys do. Please as always, let me know if you have any ideas or concerns.
We have finished the bidding process. I want to thank everyone for their patience with our new bidding platform. There were a few hiccups but I think it worked pretty well overall. I have finished putting everyone’s bid leave in WMT. Please take a few minutes to verify it was entered correctly. If you see any mistakes, please send me an email and I will fix it.
We will be opening WMT for spot leave requests beginning Wednesday, November 27th at 11 am. Please do not enter requests prior to that time. Any requests time stamped before 11 am will be deleted.
I will be on leave from November 30-December 7. If there is anything pressing that needs immediate attention, please contact Derek Adams or Amy Sizemore.
Thank you again for your continued support. As always, please let me know if there’s anything you need.
We are on track to start bidding tomorrow beginning at 10am. Once bidding is opened up, the first notification will go out to start bidding. After each person submits their bid, the notification will go out to the next person that it is their turn to bid. If you are able to, please bid when you are notified so we don’t run into unwanted delays with the bid. After you submit your bid, don’t forget to go back to the homepage in bidATC to submit your OT preference. I will be at work tomorrow morning so feel free to call or text me if you are having any issues with bidding and I’d be happy to help.
Here is the link to the bid info just in case anyone wants to reference the MOUs or the bidding tutorial video. http://www.natca-zse.com/bid-1
The briefings for bidding kicked off this week. I got word that a few of you were able to make it to a briefing so far. If for some reason you don’t get the opportunity to make it to a briefing, please let me know so I can brief you on the MOUs and how to bid with BidATC. We are hopefully going to start bidding on the 28th so please set up a profile in BidATC as soon as you can. If you need help or need your NATCA number (required for setting up a profile), please let me know ASAP. I will be working a day shift on the 28th so I will be closely monitoring our bid progress. I’m hoping with this new way of bidding it will help us speed up the process so we can finish all our rounds in a timely manner.
If you haven’t heard already, our next incoming TMC will be Dan Matsumoto from ZUA. Sounds like he will be here January 21st. He is planning a visit to house hunt and come check out the facility sometime in November.
Keeley and I took part in a CWG in September in regards to our military desk and how we do business with NUW. From what I understand we are just waiting on a date to meet with NUW to go over LOA changes. I will keep you posted as soon as there is more information.
And lastly, ABRR and PDRR are back. Yay! Please let us know if you encounter any issues with them.
As always, please let me know if you have any ideas or issues with anything. I’m more than happy to help and I appreciate the opportunity to represent all of you.
First of all, I’d like to say thank you for the opportunity to be your rep for a 2nd term. I’ve learned a lot over the last 2 years. There have been some growing pains and I will challenge myself to continue to grow as a rep. Please help me by letting me know if you have ideas, concerns, or even constructive criticism.
I’m sure everyone has heard by now that Bryan Barker has also withdrawn his acceptance to come to TMU. Believe me when I say that I am incredibly frustrated with yet another set back with our staffing. And not just because I had to redo the bid for a 3rd time. The most recent bid that went out came back with approximately 10 candidates that the panel (Keeley, Vaden, and Matt Snodgrass) requested supervisor feedback from. The cut over with Anthony leaving and Randy coming back is frustrating due to the timing but Keeley has been pretty forthcoming about the progress in the bid. My hope is that we can pick 2 off the bid and 1 from an ERR. I will make sure I share more info with you as it becomes available. I know staffing has been frustrating for everyone and I really appreciate your patience.
So far we only have one workgroup coming up in the near future. Keeley, myself, the A and C area reps and sups are meeting on September 24th to discuss the elimination of event numbers and specifying MARSA in NUW airspace. I’m under the impression that this will be a preliminary meeting to see what we all want before moving forward and speaking to NUW. Hopefully this will help with the very complex and sometime confusing schedules we’ve been getting from NUW lately.
The LSC has spoken to Keeley and myself about a couple of topics. One of them is to try and help build better working relationships with the controllers. And the other is to try and find a solution to help with some issues in regards to the military desk. I recently emailed them a snapshot of all the things we do on the military desk and how some things can get missed. I’m hoping that now the LSC is involved, we can get some help to reduce the workload for the TMCs on the military desk.
As always, please let me know if you have any ideas that I can work on. I am your rep and I’m here for all of you guys. Thank you again.
You may have heard by now that James Becker (ZLA) is no longer coming to TMU. Apparently he withdrew his acceptance to the offer 6 months ago but that information never made it to ZSE. Because of this, Anthony has asked and was given permission to select 2 people from the bid that closed last week. This was a very disappointing turn of events since its hard to say when we will be able to get anyone from this bid released to come to TMU. As always, we appreciate everyone’s patience when it comes to our staffing issues.
Last week, Keeley, Anthony (by phone), and myself met with the LSC. The topic was the relationship between the areas and TMU. The LSC thinks it would be beneficial to help improve the relationships and to bring a better understanding to everyone. One of the things we said we think would help is education on both of our parts. So far, Keeley and I worked together answering the first set of questions from the areas directed towards TMU. Other things that were discussed are making it a requirement for R-side trainees to fam in TMU before certification, requiring new TMCs to fam in the remaining areas that they didn’t certify in, and having TMU conduct briefings to the controllers. Keeley, Anthony, and myself all agree that this is a good idea and we will support it however we can. Please let us know if you have any other ideas that we can pass along to the LSC.
In September, the C area, A area, and TMU are going to meet to start discussing ways to simplify the NUW activations. They have been getting more and more complex with overlapping MARSA events and varying altitudes. This has definitely become a safety issue when its difficult for the controllers to be able to tell what aircraft belong in what airspace and to what altitude. I’m hoping we can come up with a resolution sooner rather than later. Please let me know if you have any input on this that I can bring to the meeting.
You will be receiving a secret ballot for the elections at some point this coming week. If you do not receive it by the 30th, please reach out to the election chairperson Angie McMahon. You will be able to vote for Fac Rep and your TMU rep. All ballots must be mailed early enough to be received in the mail by September 15th at 4pm.
I have truly enjoyed being your rep over these last 2 years. Everything I have done has been to try to make things better in TMU for all of us. I hope that I have represented you to the best of my abilities. I also hope that you will vote for me to continue to be your rep for the next 2 years. Thank you.
If you haven’t heard already, Dave Murphy has returned to the C area for the foreseeable future. I don’t have any details other than it was an HR issue.
If I haven’t put this out already, Matt Hopkins (P80) is due to arrive 8/5, James Becker (ZLA) is due to arrive 8/19, and Brian Barker (ATCSCC) is due to arrive 9/30.
Nominations for the eboard will begin August 1st and run through the 15th. Elections will be completed by September 15th. I need to confirm everyone’s address to ensure your ballet is delivered to the correct address. There are a few of you that I never see, so please feel free to text me your current address so I can get it updated.
Its also time for the eboard to start negotiations for next year’s MOUs. We will be holding an all members meeting tomorrow, July 23rd in the East/West conference room from 11:30-15:30. The hours are longer so that people can stop by whenever its convenient. We will be talking about MOUs and online bidding. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to stop by. There will be some sort of food provided.
I will be drafting up next year’s schedule soon as well. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on what you might like to see. So far it looks like we will be bidding 11 lines, but who knows if that will change. We are still in the process of trying to pick up Court Naylor (EUG). If that works out and he can be released in the near future, we will bid 12.
I think that’s it for now. As always, please reach out to me if you have any comments, concerns or ideas.
I’m back from NiW and I would love to share a little about my experience. This was my first time participating and I had a great (and exhausting) time. We got to meet with several people and share some of our experiences. I won’t get into too much detail here, but feel free to contact me and I will be happy to talk about all of it. There will be more info coming out in a facility update as well.
Some of you may have already heard that Matt Hopkins (P80) has been picked up on on a temp bid (the one from forever ago). His release date is August 4, 2019. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get him through the training department.
I’m planning to start building next year’s bid soon. I’m still not totally sure how many lines we will bid since there will be so much movement. But please let me know if you have any ideas or questions.
We have an all members meeting coming up on Thursday June 13th at 14:30 at the Rainbow Cafe in Auburn. We will be discussing MOU negotiations, Local constitution amendment proposals, a holiday party, etc. Hopefully some of you will be able to make it.
As always, please let me know if you have any comments, concerns or ideas.
NATCA in Washington 2019
I had a meeting with Anthony and Keeley today to discuss a few things…
First and foremost, staffing. We are still getting James Becker (ZLA) in August and Bryan Barker (ATCSCC) in September. With those 2 coming in, Sean retiring in September and Lee being picked up for an FLM position, so far we are planning on bidding 10 lines. However, we are still trying to select Court Naylor (EUG) and we should know soon if that can happen outside of the NCEPT process. That still leave us 2 vacancies. Anthony has said that its his goal to get us to 13 TMCs and 3 STMCs quickly. I know its been rough with staffing being short. Everyone’s patience has been noticed and appreciated by myself, Anthony and Keeley.
Secondly, there are a couple workgroups being formed to work on PDX metering and trying to start simplifying the military desk. It sounds like the PDX metering one will happen first since we are looking at runway closures starting in July and we would all like to finally see some procedures for PDX metering on paper. The second workgroup will start with procedures for NUW activations and scheduling. My hope is we can clean this up a lot and alleviate confusion and redundancies. I want everyone to have a say in major changes we have and I will continue to represent all of our best interests so please let me know if you have any ideas.
I’m sure everyone has heard by now that we are no longer doing 10 MIT on the HAWKZ in conjunction with metering. There have been a lot of issues that have come up because of it. Anthony has tasked Keeley and I to do 2 TMRs (traffic management reviews) on situations when there was 10 MIT in place and one where there wasn’t to see the impacts/benefits in both situations. Again, please let me know if you have any info or input on this.
I will be starting to work on next year’s bid very shortly. I will plan on building a 10 and 11 line bid just in case we are able to get Court in time. Let me know if you have any ideas on what you might like to see for next year. Obviously with only 10 or 11 lines, we can’t get too fancy but we can definitely look into things.
Lastly (I think), I will be leaving early on Sunday (5/19) and will be gone until 5/22 for NATCA in Washington. This will be my first time attending and I’m pretty excited. I’ve never been interested in the political aspect of things but after the shutdown, I want to continue to do my part to make sure that doesn't happen again. I will be reachable by call, text or email except for when we are in meetings. But I will for sure get back to you as soon as I can. If you need something right away, don’t hesitate to reach out to Derek or Amy.
I will be on leave from February 23rd until March 11th and I will not be reachable. If you have anything that needs immediate attention, please contact Alex Navarro or Derek Adams. Feel free to email me with anything that can wait until I get back.
I will be on leave beginning November 27th and returning to work December 6th. I will be in cell phone coverage so feel free to text if you need something and I will get back to you as soon as I can. For anything that needs immediate attention, please contact Alex Navarro or Derek Adams.
~Sherri
I’ve been receiving quite a bit of feedback when it comes to metering lately, particularly about meter times changing. Please make sure you are cognizant about where an aircraft is before swapping times around. If you absolutely need to swap a time that a sector is already seeing, please call the area to let them know so they expect the change. Thank you.
Secondly, Randy will be going to the Command Center the 2nd week of December to deliver a briefing about how and why we meter during GDPs. Randy is asking for any additional info that we can provide him to add to his briefing.
~ Sherri
The TFMS deployment team is looking for some feedback for the TFMS roadshow when they came out to train us on ABRR and PDRR. If you are interested in giving your feedback, the contact information is below. Thank you.
~ Sherri
Good morning/afternoon
We are following up with everyone who participated in the TFMS Roadshows. If you (or others who participated) have an opinion on how the Roadshows went and what can be improved, now is the time! It’s also an opportunity to share your opinions on other tools that you use. The Technical Center is conducting a study on Decision Support Tools – how to design them, train them, etc. We thought this was an important effort given how many Decision Support Tools are used in TMU, and that this would be a good way to also get your feedback on the Roadshows.
This is an opportunity to make your voice heard. The Roadshows were an unprecedented type of outreach to the field. If you think they were beneficial and should be repeated, or that they were a waste of time and money, we would like to know. The information gathered will be provided to the TFMS Program Office and used by the FAA Human Factors Branch as input for a handbook for the design, training, and implementation of Decision Support Tools.
We are gathering this information via a one-on-one structured interview on the phone. This effort has been coordinated with NATCA. Below is the request for participation from the Primary Investigator at the Tech Center, Carolina Zingale, along with instructions on how to reach her and set up a convenient time. Please pass it along to anyone who participated in the Roadshows. Your support and their participation and feedback will be very much appreciated and can make a great impact.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. If you have questions regarding the study, please feel free to contact Carolina directly.
For participants:
If you participated in the TFMS Roadshows earlier this year, we would like to speak with you! What worked? What didn’t work? Were they useful? We are also looking to get feedback about your use of some of the tools covered (e.g., ABRR, PDRR, CTOP) and other, similar types of Decision Support Tools (DSTs). We will use the information we gather along with other data to develop a Handbook that will provide guidelines for how to design, implement, and train DSTs for use in the NAS.
This is an opportunity to influence how future tools are designed and trained! If you are available to speak with us, please send me a note at carolina.zingale@faa.gov or give me a call at (609) 485-8629. We will look to schedule a 1-hour time slot for a phone call with you from now through the end of December 2018, Mon – Fri, between 8 AM – 4 PM ET. Please let me know the best way to get in touch with you to set that up.
Thank you very much for your participation!
Carolina
This week there are briefings for the bidding process that is slated to start on Sunday the 14th. After talking with Randy on Tuesday, it was determined that we will only be bidding 9 lines. I worked for several hours Tuesday night to come up with a schedule that will work for us until we can get our next transfer (January). I understand this is undesirable and I feel the frustration with not having adequate staffing. We are due to get our next transfers In January, August and September.
If you aren’t able to get out for the briefings this week, the MOUs are in TMU and were also sent out in a facility update by Alex on the 9th. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Sherri
I will be on leave starting Sept 9th and get back on the 15th. For most of that time I will be unreachable (we are going on a cruise). If there is something that needs immediate attention, James has so graciously accepted my request for him to fill in for me. If it can wait, I will be back in cell phone coverage on the 14th.