Negotiations Update
November 6, 2015
The Committee met in Houston on Thursday to review United’s Last, best, final offer to the membership. The committee was presented with an incomplete, inaccurate document that did not reflect some items previously agreed to in principal by the parties over the past 3 years. Because of the lack of attention to detail on United’s part in providing this committee with the information described above, we spent the evening identifying and cataloguing items that were inaccurate, not agreed upon, or simply missing. It was decided that we would forward this list of findings to the company along with a request that UA provide a complete, accurate document for our review. We hope to have that detailed information from the company in the next few weeks. The committee is committed to providing you with accurate, factual documents and information in order for you to make an informed decision and cast your ballot.
Because of inferred changes to parts of the CBA as presented by UA, namely recall rights, all members on layoff or EIS will be able to cast ballots in the coming vote. The vote will be scheduled as quickly as information is received from the company and disseminated to the membership. Ballots can typically be built in approximately 30 days from the time we have received a complete document describing what, exactly, will be voted on. As part of that ballot, a strike authorization vote will be taken. Authorizing a strike does not mean we will go on strike but sends a very strong message to the company that we will not allow them to dictate the terms of our contract and will strike, if necessary, to achieve a fair and equitable agreement.
On another front, United's management has been doing station visits and addressing the membership about their “Final Offer”. These briefings are rife with HALF-TRUTHS and MIS-INFORMATION designed to convince you that they have your best interests at heart. Don’t buy the sales pitch! When we have an actual document from the company describing what they intend to do, we will be able to provide accurate, up-to-date information. At this point, United will tell you only what you want to hear, NOT facts surrounding their actual proposed contract. Expect to hear only the highlights that would be interpreted as good for you. They won’t tell you the whole truth! Be well informed. There’s a reason we don’t yet have a complete, detailed proposal from this carrier.


From the Seniority Integration Committee:
The seniority list is complete. The last three days have been spent finalizing the programming, making slight modifications, and then re-testing.
The sort this morning appears to have all the changes we have created, and on preliminary inspection the order looks correct.
Our small team is going to review the entire document, then share it with the full seniority committee. Once the finalized list has been reviewed for accuracy, we will open the list to the negotiations committee for distribution to the membership. We anticipate having this task completed by late next week with no major discrepancies.

Process Update
October 29, 2015

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Teamster Airline Division Representatives Clacy Griswold and Bob Fisher, along with Rank and File committee member John Laurin who is acting as the committee scribe and historian, met with Company Reps Marcel Delhommeau, Kellee Allain, and Nate Kramer to receive the Company’s proposal. Most of the paper package was received over the two-day meeting. There are still some outstanding LoA’s that the Company is finalizing which we expect to have later this week or early next week.
The reason for the delay of the final documents is that the parties were working on language for much of the document, but there were several other items that were passed in term sheet format with language to be finalized after the concepts were agreed upon. Several items that were not agreed upon require the Company to finish the language prior to presenting the proposal to the membership. It is important that this paper package is received and archived for both historical purposes as well as for any future negotiations or arbitrations that may arise.
There will be a meeting of the Rank and File committee next Thursday in Houston to review the Company’s finalized proposal. Shortly after that meeting the document will be sent to the printer and released online for review by the membership.

Special Update October 26, 2015

It has been reported in several stations that supervisors are characterizing the proposal to be voted on as a “TA” or tentative agreement. This package is not a TA but rather what the Company termed as a closeout proposal. The reason the proposal is not a tentative agreement between the parties is because it contains some terms and conditions that were, either not fully negotiated, or were simply not agreed to by the rank and file Committee. The Committee acted on a request from the Company and voted to allow this proposal to come to a vote of the membership. This was considered by the Committee to be United’s final offer. The details of United’s closeout proposal will be made available to you for review and a vote will be scheduled to allow the membership the opportunity to vote on United’s offer. Further information will be published in the near future