TonyC

Filing a grievance is little more complicated and technical than lodging a complaint. In order to file a grievance, I would need to show where and how I was harmed by a violation of the CBA, and I would have to seek a remedy to make me whole. Since I was not involuntarily excessed, I cannot show that I personally was harmed. However, 70 of our brothers and sisters, more or less, will be able to show harm when they were needlessly kicked out of their current seats. The names and numbers might change between the Practice Bid Award and the Final Bid Award, but I am going to use the Posting 13-04 (B-767 Vacancy) Practice Bid Award to explain the principle and demonstrate the method to determine which pilots have been harmed.


Postings 13-03 (Excess) and 13-04 (Vacancy) were published to retire the B-727 and fill vacancies in the B-767 at the same time. When Posting 13-03 was published, VP Flight Ops Bowman stated, “Posting 13-03 is the first of two bids necessary to realign crew staffing requirements with current system form. Programming logic cannot currently manage vacancies and excesses in one bid, so we need to run separate vacancy and excess bids. A second bid, Posting 13-04, will be published the third week in April offering vacancies associated with the introduction of the B767. The two bids will overlap by approximately one week so that crew members participating in the excess bid will have a better view of the overall staffing picture.”

Of course we all know that the “programming logic cannot currently manage …” excuse holds no water, since they’ve already managed it at least twice. Postings 08-01 and 08-02 both managed vacancies and excesses in one bid. But rather than dwell on the disingenuousness of that claim, concentrate on the intent he communicated to handle both vacancies and excesses in “overlapping” postings.

Furthermore, Posting 13-04 fails to satisfy the CBA requirements of a Vacancy posting. Section 24 of our CBA sets forth the rules for filling of vacancies. §24.B.1.c. says, “Each posting shall be published and remain available for bidding for the following minimum time periods: (i.) 14 days for permanent vacancies or excesses at an existing non-FDA domicile.”

The time period between the close of Posting 13-03 and Posting 13-04 is barely 7 days, and the Bid Award Procedures for Posting 13-03 have not yet been fulfilled. Per §24.C.2.c. & d., within 10 days following the closing of a posting, the Company shall communicate … projected training dates and projected activation dates. We commonly refer to the information required here as the “Training Letter.” Without a Training Letter from Posting 13-03, we do not have complete information upon which to base bidding decisions regarding Posting 13-04.

Those requirements have been ignored because the idea of Posting 13-04 as a separate bid is a pretense – a fabrication used to circumvent the rules in the CBA, and to deny pilots all of their rights therein. Postings 13-03 and 13-04 are in actuality a single posting, and should be processed as a single posting.

Here’s the problem:By separating the Vacancy Posting from the Excess Posting, the order of award has been violated. Pilots who are involuntarily excessed are supposed to be assigned those positions after the vacancies and bids to relieve are awarded. This CBA prescribed order reduces the number of pilots who are involuntarily excessed. By violating this order, The Company has caused an additional 70 pilots to be involuntarily excessed.

The B-767 Vacancy Posting awarded 35 pilots 67CM and 35 pilots 67FM. Every pilot who bid those seats from a seat which was declared "In Excess" by Posting 13-03 reduced the number of crew positions which should have been excessed. As a result, 70 pilots will be involuntarily assigned to another seat. Some will only incur a base change, so they’ll be faced with the mere inconvenience of selling a house, buying a house, moving the family, or changing their commuting strategy. Some will be subjected to a new training program and all of its hazards and inconveniences. Most will suffer a substantial cut in compensation, not only in their monthly paychecks, but also to their retirement accounts.

As an example, look at the Practice Bid Award for Posting 13-04. Of the 35 pilots awarded 67CM, the previous award for 6 pilots was 30CM. That means that the number of Airbus Captains who were involuntarily excessed should have been reduced by 6. Which pilots? Compare the “Current Bid Percentiles” list for the 13-03 Posting with the “Final Bid Percentiles” for the same Posting. In the former list, the most junior pilot is seniority number 2629; in the latter, it is 2580. The next step is a little more tedious, and I’m not inclined to do it for 70 pilots since this is a practice bid, and the numbers are likely to change. However, the process will be the same. The next pilot junior to 2580 is the first pilot likely to be grieved. In this case, it’s 2603. A search of the Final Bid Award lists reveals that this pilot Bid To Relieve Excess to the 57CM seat, so he was not harmed by this violation. The next pilot is 2611, who was assigned 57CM as a result of his Bid To Be Excessed. In other words, he was Involuntarily Excessed. Had the Vacancies, Bids to Relieve, and Bids to Be Excessed been processed in the order prescribed in §24.C.1., this pilot would not have been reduced from wide-body Captain to narrow-body Captain.

There is the potential for 70 such grievants, depending on how Secondary Vacancies are treated. In addition to the offset that should have been applied for the B-767 Vacancies, the Company, in the practice bid, elected to fill EVERY B-777 Secondary Vacancy that was created, and even filled the “secondary” Secondary vacancies created in the 77FM seat by 77FM being awarded 77CM Secondary vacancies. That brings the total potential 30CM grievants to 11.

A quick overview of the B-767 Practice Bid results shows the following potential grievants:Add the B-777 awards, and the total goes to 91 potential grievants. I hope they all pursue grievances based on The Company’s failure to comply with Section 24.C.1. of our CBA. None of them should be involuntarily excessed.

I hope The Association will mount a vigorous case, but don't count on them to initiate the process. A grieved pilot needs to step up and begin the process: file the grievance.

Are you a potential grievant? If you were involuntarily excessed (your current seat was higher on your standing bid than the seat which you were awarded), the time you spend digging through the lists will be more than rewarded by the potential loss of income that you can prevent.




(Having dug through a few of the lists, I recognize an error in the method I've described above. The "Previous Award" on the Posting 13-04 (B-767 Vacancy) Practice Bid Award are the seats which were awarded on Posting 13-03, and therefore do not necessarily reflect where they started the musical chairs. For example, 3 pilots were awarded 77FM as their "Current Award" whose "Previous Award" was 30CH. Of those, two began the 13-03 process as 77FM (so they got back to where they started), and one began the process as 11FM, and could have easily survived the excess bid in that seat. It appears he bid for FEPP, and then used this posting to bail out of an FDA award. (Smart fella, he is. ) For each pilot who is awarded a Vacancy on Posting 13-04, we need to look at the "Previous Award" for Posting 13-03 to determine where he started the combined process.)






.