Dearest A Area,
It's been a minute since I last updated you, and I have a bunch of items. Here they are:
Overtime in conjunction with approved leave
Over the past three years, we have collaborated with management to do everything possible to avoid assigning overtime to people in conjunction with leave.
Our rationale has been that we didn't want to give that benefit away -- that if you were on leave, you knew you wouldn't be assigned OT in conjunction with it.
However, due to the implementation of the FAA's new fatigue rules, this is no longer feasible.
I believe that having a limited week every three weeks will be a much-needed improvement in our lives. We can't keep working all of the overtime that we've worked over the past several years.
That being said, the change will obviously have a major impact on our ability to be fully staffed. We already had two controllers get assigned OT in conjunction with approved leave in the first pay period of the new schedule, and we had multiple people scheduled in the third new pay period. I anticipate this continuing intermittently throughout the year.
I sat down with Tasha, our new operations manager, last week. One of the things we discussed was this issue and my expectations for management complying with Article 38 of the contract, which states:
"An employee shall be relieved of an overtime assignment when, in the judgement of the agency ... personal circumstances make it impossible for the employee to perform the overtime duty."
I expect management to continue to relieve us of specific OT assignments if we come to them and advise them that we have personal circumstances preventing us from working the shift. Please bring along any receipts that you have -- ie, plane tickets or hotel reservations. We had to straighten out one supe last year about this article. If you need to use it in the coming year and get any pushback, please let me know and I will address it with management.
OT memo
In PP5 (the third one of the new schedule), there were two shifts that we weren’t able to staff to guides due to our still-awful staffing. We agreed with management to leave those shifts blank on the OT memo that gets placed next to our headset box. If you’re limited for that week but are interested in volunteering for a blank OT assignment, please advise management and you shouldl be given that OT shift (on a first-come-first-serve basis).
Management is prohibited from asking you to work any OT shift during your protected week, but you are entitled to volunteer to work an OT shift if you desire.
Should management at any point in time attempt to pressure you into working any OT shift during your limited week, please let me know so that I can speak with them about it.
Certifications
In going through my previous updates, I realize how much the fall and now winter have gotten away from me. It's been far too long since I included trainee certifications in an update.
Congrats to Zoe Martin for getting certified on D3/12 and D2/32; Kenny Hobbs for getting R2/32; Jim Wang for getting D2/32; Jared Davis for getting D1/31; and Derek Harris for getting R2/32.
I appreciate all of you and am excited for you to continue your training careers.
Art. 5 volunteer
We need an Art. 5 volunteer to train an R-side student in the lab between April 7-May 15. Please let me know if you're interested.
Area refresher volunteer
We need a volunteer (or two, ideally) to help with our annual area refresher training between March 24-28. Let me know if you're interested in volunteering.
New CIC class
There will be a class for new CICs on March 22. If you're a CPC but not a CIC and want to be one, please let me know.
In solidarity,
Dan Rasmussen
801-860-3821