Boeing 787 Dreamliner, ER Operations, and Uniforms
Dear Hawaiian Flight Attendants:
This past week was very productive and we were able to make significant progress on several important issues. We feel as though momentum has picked up during this week of negotiations.
Boeing 787 Dreamliner
Jon Snook, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, delivered a presentation on the company’s analysis that ultimately led to its decision to acquire the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. An internal deadline of 45 days has been set to reach an agreement with AFA and ALPA before finalizing the multi-billion dollar order. We have set up meeting dates for next month to work out the details of such an agreement.
(Video: President & CEO Peter Ingram shares his thoughts on the Dreamliner).
Extended Range (ER) Operations
We resumed our discussions from our last session on ER operations. We realize that this is an important issue to everyone for a variety of reasons. The future offers an opportunity for expansion in the Asia market and with it more jobs for us. The company has emphasized that language speakers are an essential component, and had in fact indicated that they had wanted additional LQ positions on the aircraft. We certainly recognize the important contributions made by everyone, but we have maintained our position that we are properly staffed and that our current crew complement has proven to be effective for us in the Asia market. Our crew complement will not be changing on International language flights.
One important improvement we are working on is allowing the 10th Flight Attendant position to be bid out in PBS when the crew-to-load staffing criteria are met.
Uniforms
We were able to reach an agreement with the company on our uniform point allowance for the years 2020 forward. The current uniform program is outlined in the uniform transition agreement, which runs through 2019. We received 500 points in 2018, and we will receive 700 points in 2019.
National Group Protection (NGP) Insurance
Early in the week we were joined by representatives of NGP (National Group Protection) Insurance. Along with providing supplemental benefit plans to Flight Attendants, NGP also provides assistance with evaluating and optimizing existing employee insurance plans. They were helpful in providing us with some preliminary information about ways we may be able to improve our existing plans. If you are in the market or are interested in getting more information about supplemental insurance, please be sure to meet with one of the NGP representatives that will be in the Honolulu lounge through Monday, March 19th . NGP representatives will be visiting Los Angeles at a soon to be announced date.
Looking Forward
In April we have scheduled two weeks of bargaining sessions in Honolulu. The week of April 16-20 will be dedicated to the 787, and the week of April 23-27 will be focused on Section 6 negotiations. As a reminder, our email address is open and available for questions, comments, or suggestions. Our address is AFAcontract2017@halafa.org
Mahalo from the Negotiating Committee,
Sharon Soper, Diana Huihui, Ka'imi Lee, Martin Gusman, Jeff Fuke and
Joe Burns, AFA Director of Collective Bargaining