November 4, 2016
JUNIOR MANNING LIMITS
Fellow DFW Pilots,
Recently, we have received several reports from pilots indicating a dispute with Crew Scheduling’s handling of junior man assignments. Specifically, Crew Scheduling has been building pilots multi-leg and multi-day junior man assignments, extending their normal schedules. A major contention we have with this practice is, for accounting purposes, Crew Scheduling is considering the multi-leg/multi-day junior man assignments as a single junior man event if the addition of the junior man assignments were added to the pilot’s schedule at the same time, thus attempting to avoid the two junior man per month limitation prescribed in our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
Your LEC 083 Leadership Team believes our contract provides clear language on junior manning limits with respect to multi-leg and multi-day junior man assignments and requires Crew Scheduling to treat these assignments as more than a single junior man event. When the Company assigns pilots multi-leg and/or multi-day junior man flights and considers this flying to be a single junior man event, they violate CBA Section 11.L.3 (and other sections of our contract) which states:
"When a pilot is junior manned into a day off (notwithstanding exceptions in Paragraph L.1.a.), followed by an extension on the same calendar day, that combination of events will count as two junior manning events."
Additionally, CBA Section 11.L.2 states, “No pilot will be junior-manned more than twice in any contractual month or twelve times in any contractual year.” All crewmembers should familiarize themselves with this contract section and the requirement to notify Crew Scheduling when the pilot has reached the annual limit. Also, when your schedule is adjusted due to a junior man assignment, we ask that you retain evidence of your schedule each time it is changed.
The present action by the Company represents a non-negotiated modification to existing contract language and established practice. Whether multiple junior man assignments are added to a pilot’s schedule all at once or at different times by Crew Scheduling, every time the junior man flying extends the pilot’s schedule by departing and returning to a domicile or extends into another scheduled day off, each additional assignment which extends the pilots schedule is a separate junior man event. Historically, the Company has complied with CBA Section 11.L.3 but, due to recent staffing shortages, they appear to have reinterpreted contract language to suit their needs.
We need all pilots who were required to perform the non-contractual assignment(s) as described above to file a contract compliance dispute form on the ALPA website and to contact your local union representatives immediately (
[email protected] &
[email protected]). When completing the dispute form and when emailing your representatives, please provide as much detail as possible, including any collected evidence. The Association has addressed this issue with Envoy Management and we anticipate filing a grievance over the Company’s non-contractual actions.
We also want to remind pilots to not invent “personal reasons” in order to utilize CBA Section 11.K.5 to be removed from junior man flying on a scheduled day off. CBA Section 11.K.5 allows a pilot to have a junior man assignment that was added to his/her day off removed with the placeholder code “UA” when a pilot is unable to accept the assignment due to personal reasons. Please be sure to only use this contract provision if you have actual personal reasons that prevent you from accepting the junior man flying on a day off.
As always, if you experience more than two junior man events in any contractual month or other circumstances that may not be in compliance with the contract, please retain all evidence and contact your LEC 083 Leadership Team immediately. Remember, evidence and thorough documentation win grievances so there is no such thing as too much. It is also important to file a timely dispute because the Contract Compliance Committee has 60 days to notify the Company in cases of contract disputes and 14 days in cases of discipline. While we can't oversee each of the thousands of operations conducted daily, with your help and continued vigilance we can address and ultimately resolve issues such as this.
In Unity,
Captain Neal Spanier
ENY LEC-083 Chairman
First Officer Kyle Flynn
ENY LEC-083 Vice-Chairman
Captain Pat Couture
ENY LEC-083 Secretary-Treasurer