BWS negotiations
Awhile back Patrick asked me to send out a survey he made about schedules. The conclusions: Most people are potentially interested in a BWS line of four 10-hour shifts. A lot of people are at least somewhat interested in straight day shifts. Quite a few people are interested in straight swings. Some people are interested in rotating a week of day shifts and swing shifts. Some people were interested in the idea of biannual or trimester bidding.
I’ve had conversations since then with Damien and Derek about what we should be advocating for when we negotiate our 2023 BWS with the agency.
I would love to add multiple lines of 4 10-hour days to our schedule, but having them in 2023 isn’t realistic for several reasons. 1, we couldn’t balance the schedule with multiple people on 10-hour days. 2, it would force people on the no-list to have two OT shifts per week instead of one. 3, the agency will not allow us to incur the additional burden of those OTs.
As for the other ideas: We’re concerned about creating lines with straight days and straight swings and having that negatively affect the bottom part of our seniority (i.e., if you’re near the bottom of seniority, I don’t want you to be forced onto W-Th. straight swings). And I’m also concerned that biannual or trimester bidding would negatively affect controllers in the bottom part of our seniority. (And making that kind of a change would be a huge process that would have to be discussed across the entire facility, whether other areas want to adopt it or not.)
Resultantly, we will be advocating for a BWS schedule in 2023 that is similar to what we have this year. The long-term goal is for us to continue to rebuild our area through as much training as we can accommodate so that we can get to staffing levels that would support some of the changes that Patrick’s survey proposed and people expressed interest in.
I sat down informally with Russ on Sunday to begin negotiating our schedule, and Damien and I are scheduled to sit down with the agency on Friday to continue working on that process.
On Sunday, we tentatively agreed to our 2023 guides, which will remain the same as 2022 except that Saturday and Sunday day shifts will increase from 9 to 10 during the summer.
We discussed a number of possible changes, and I would like feedback from the area about a few of them:
The agency wants to eliminate our 1600 shift and make it an additional 1530 (except, of course, the 1600NFs). The way we currently run the floor, I don’t feel like I can legitimately push back against this (even though I know that there are a handful of you that do love having the late shift). However, my concern is that traffic will return to pre-pandemic levels and we’ll need to have Sector 3 open past 11 p.m. If we eliminate the 16 and make it a 1530, we’re not guaranteed to have more than two bodies past 11. I think I’d lean toward allowing the agency to change them from 16s to 1530s, with the understanding that they’ll have to use OT if we run into situations where we can’t close Sector 3 by 11. However, I’d like feedback from you all about whether that makes sense or not to you.
The agency wants to move one of our 0800 shifts to a 0900. We have tentatively agreed to let them do this on Saturday because we have the 16NFs that day. However, I really do not want us to have that shift the rest of the week. We have collaboratively agreed upon our hour-by-hour guides, and my argument to them is that we stick with those guides and staff accordingly. If we go to a 1530 instead of 16, we’d have everyone on the swing at work by 3:30 p.m., so to me it’s pointless to force someone to stay late. From our preliminary discussions, I said I’d solicit feedback from all you about a 0900 shift. Would you prefer to have a 9 or an 8?
Does anyone object to eliminating the 2245 mid and making it a 2230? I have asked around and can’t think of a single reason why we have the 2245, but I wanted to ask to make sure I’m not missing anything?
Before I move on, I just want to add one thing: Damien has been instrumental in helping us get ready to sit down with management to negotiate all of these things. He does a ton of work for us, and I want to highlight that fact. He’s a rockstar with our schedule, and I feel lucky that we have him in our area.
S46 CWG
The collaborative work group that’s reviewing our LOA was scheduled to be completed by Sept. 1. However, the CWG has only met once since it began last spring — due primarily to scheduling challenges over at S46. Resultantly, the CWG will be extended for three months.
Based on our initial discussions, I anticipate there being a lot of tweaks to the LOA, but that it will substantively be similar to what we’re currently doing. Tyler and Steve love giving me a hard time about calling our friends at S46 our “brothers and sisters.” I have been trying to make clear to our brothers and sisters over there that the biggest thing we’d like to see improved is their departure separation.
They proposed a 60-day trial of assigning 270 KTS to departing jets. According to the ATM at S46, KSEA is one of only three Core 30 airports in the NAS that doesn’t have speed-control procedures for departures. I do believe that the best way for them to improve departure separation is to assign speeds.
At one point recently, it appeared that we were on the verge of agreeing on the framework for a speed-control trial — and then the airspace supe at S46 balked at the proposal and said he didn’t want to do it. My response to them is: If they’re not going to assign speeds, what are they going to do to improve departure separation? (Supposedly that supe has somewhat backed down since then, but we haven’t heard yet whether they’re in to do their own proposal or not.)
A area staffing
I want to clarify an item that got sent out in the notes from our recent all-members meeting. We badly need more controllers in our area to be able to continue to crawl out of the staffing hole that the agency has left us in. Over the past year, we’ve gotten more new trainees than any other area, and we need a lot more. In the conversations that I’ve had with management, no one is saying that we can’t take more controllers in the A area. The hope is that we will continue to get academy grads – and other controllers that transfer to the facility – while not overstressing our already-tight staffing.
In solidarity,
Dan Rasmussen
801-860-3821