Weekly Update May 15th, Part One of Two

This week’s update will come in two parts because we are working out some more details on the five and five schedule that will come out in the next couple of days.

Charity

First of all, you guys are awesome. So far, we have given $500 checks to 5 different food banks in the area and hope to do more! We’ll keep it going as long as funds are coming in. If you’re interested in donating, the Venmo ID is @Amanda-Sizemore1. 

Training

NATCA is offering a lot of virtual classes, most of which are not normally a class they provide. We have listed them below in case you are interested in what’s available. You’ve probably done all those projects around the house already, might as well shake it up a little and take a class. If you are interested in signing up but need some help doing it, please let us know. 

Article 6 Representation Rights 05/16/2020 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Medical Reporting Requirements (Rep/Advocate Perspective) 05/16/2020 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Building Lasting Relationships 05/18/2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

ATSAP Webinar 05/19/2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Federal Contract Tower Issues/Concerns 05/20/2020 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Having a Difficult Conversation 05/20/2020 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Medical Reporting Requirements (Rep/Advocate Perspective) 05/21/2020 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Article 6 Representation Rights 05/21/2020 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Building a Stronger Local 05/22/2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

You Hate Politics Too, Let's Talk 05/23/2020 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Article 6 Representation Rights 05/26/2020 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Medical Reporting Requirements (Rep/Advocate Perspective) 05/26/2020 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

End of Year Forms 05/27/2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Building Lasting Relationships 05/27/2020 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Having a Difficult Conversation 05/28/2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

How to conduct an EBoard/General Membership Meeting 05/29/2020 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Building a Stronger Local 05/30/2020 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Having a Difficult Conversation 06/01/2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Partnership for Safety Webinar 06/02/2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Building Lasting Relationships 06/04/2020 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Building a Stronger Local 06/05/2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Building Lasting Relationships 06/09/2020 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Federal Contract Tower Issues/Concerns 06/10/2020 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Building a Stronger Local 06/10/2020 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Temperature & Humidity (OSHA) 06/11/2020 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Safety Management System (SMS) Webinar 06/11/2020 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

How to Amend your Local Constitution 06/12/2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Having a Difficult Conversation 06/13/2020 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Federal Contract Tower Issues/Concerns 07/15/2020 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Federal Contract Tower Issues/Concerns 08/19/2020 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

As soon as the other details are finalized, we will get the other half of the update to you. It should be in the next couple of days.

In Solidarity,

Derek and Amy

Weekly Update May 8th

Wow, how a week can change things for us. We know we told you last week that we intended to publish pay period thirteen with the same dynamic scheduling as we had been, but due to multiple reasons, traffic increases being the biggest, we have found ourselves needing to change during pay period twelve. We had promised a special update on any necessary schedule changes, but due to circumstances leading to us not having all the intricacies ironed out until late this afternoon, we held out on the update to ensure that we were able to provide all of the accurate details.

Schedule Changes

We will be transitioning to a two crew, five days on, five days off schedule starting May 28th. This is in response to increased scheduled activity with the airlines, flight schools, military and general uptick in flights with the states starting to open up again. It is important for us to be proactive versus reactive and balance the safety of the NAS with social distancing. As stated in the last update, this is a move that must be made facility wide to keep cross contamination to a minimum. While we don’t have enough people spread across three crews to support the heavier traffic, moving to two crews will likely put more people than needed on each shift. To address this, we have negotiated with management to put some people “on call.” In essence, this will be EA in addition to your five days, but you are subject to recall during this time. It is extremely important that we do not mess around with this. If people do not answer their phones, we are certain they will stop it all together and you will be required to show up for your entire five days. 

Here are the key points: 

• On days that you are “on call,” management has up to four hours before the start of the shift to recall you.

• There is a distinct difference between your “on-call” EA and the five days of EA you have after your five days of work. 

  • Recall of employees during their “on-call” EA is determined at the local level. This means it can/will probably be done the day of your shift. We do not want anyone to find themselves in a bad situation because there is a need to recall them and they do not answer or are out of commuting distance. As stated above, please take this very seriously because we don’t want to lose the ground that we’ve gained with management on our bare-bones staffing and additional opportunities to social distance.

  • Recall of employees that are on their five full days of EA will still come from the district level. This will likely only happen in the case of a positive COVID-19 case and will have a couple of days notice.

• Taking a sick hit will not always necessitate a recall. This will be determined by management on a case-by-case basis and will consider many factors including projected traffic, weather, military operations and any other factors that may impact our workload and our ability to handle it with the staffing we have.

• Your area reps and area schedulers are working out the “on call” rotation but in general, this will happen in order of seniority

• The current start and stop times of the shifts will not change.

• Every area will be slightly different but all will get no more than ten consecutive days of EA. This was determined nationally and not negotiated at the local level.

These schedules will be challenging for your rep and scheduler to build so please have patience and know they are working very hard to ensure the “on call” time is distributed evenly.

Charity

As of this update, we have raised $2813! Amy dropped off checks for $500 each to the Bonney Lake and Sumner Food banks and made electronic payments of $500 each to Auburn and Kent food banks. We plan on dropping the check for Puyallup off on Monday. We have had suggestions for the Mission Women’s Shelter in Tacoma, Auburn Humane Society, Muckleshoot Resource Center and Maple Valley food bank, hopefully we can get to them all. Keep up the awesome work ZSE!

As of right now, we still have not heard even a whisper about staff specialists/non-essential employees returning or training resuming anytime soon but we’ll let you know as soon as we do. It is safe to assume it will happen fairly quickly when they do decide that though.

As always, we hope you are all staying safe and healthy. We are here if you need anything, even if it’s just to talk to someone besides your family (seriously, call us, we’re losing it here). Thanks for your understanding as we make this transition sooner than we had hoped. As with everything up to this point we have no timelines and we don’t know exactly what to expect in the coming weeks and months, but your Eboard will continue to work on your behalf to make this all as painless as possible.

In Solidarity,

Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore

Weekly Update May 2nd

Well, round three of our Dynamic Schedule is officially underway and things seem to still be going well. Air carrier traffic is still down significantly, but the military and GA seem to have ramped up just a bit.

Dynamic Scheduling

We know the rumors have already been flying around about updating the dynamic schedule to reflect five-on and five-off to accommodate traffic levels, the new requirement for either the A or B area to CIC due to supervisors not having direct line-of-sight of both areas and leave season. The Eboard met virtually last night in order to discuss if and when we want to start making this transition. We brainstormed many ideas to help mitigate the need to alter our schedule to five-on and five-off and have determined that we will not be changing our schedule for pay period thirteen. Instead we will publish as we have been and continue to monitor all factors that may necessitate a change to our current schedule. Please be aware that our first priority is balancing our members' health with safe and reasonable working conditions. Please be mindful that a change to the published schedules may be required at some point, but we will be delaying this until the Eboard agrees that it is a necessity. Please also note that when the time comes to change, we will be doing it as a facility despite some areas potentially needing it more than others. This conversation about adjustments to the schedule is only taking place on the NATCA side to ensure we are ready for any needed changes. We have not engaged management in these conversations other than to let them know that we are monitoring the situation very closely. Don has not indicated that he is under any direction to start altering our schedule and seems to be awaiting word from NATCA that we believe it is needed. If any more information comes out on a schedule change, you can expect a special update from us immediately. Thanks for your continued patience as we navigate this strange and sometimes difficult time. 

GA Traffic

Along the same line of our reduced staffing and upticks in GA traffic, please remember that flight following is on a workload permitting basis. We are not advocating that you do not provide services, but simply reiterating that our expectation is not for our members to allow themselves to get into an unmanageable situation while trying to provide additional services. Look out for yourself and your coworkers as we continue to work traffic with a reduced amount of staffing and resources.    

Charity

As you all remember, communities across the nation stepped up to help us out during the shutdown. We think that most people would like the opportunity to give back, so we will start collecting money to donate lunches, gift cards and whatever else might be helpful for our neighbors. We hope to find a way to make a separate account altogether for our donations but for right now it will have to go to Amy’s Venmo. (I will be as transparent as possible with all records for anyone interested -Amy) We have had suggestions to support the Auburn Hospital, Auburn Food Bank and the Puyallup Food Bank but if you have any other suggestions or would like to help out in some way, please let us know. 

Please donate to Venmo account: @Amanda-Sizemore1 with the subject line ZSE. This will make it easy to keep separate. Any amount helps and we will fill you in on the donations made in future updates. Thank you!

With that, we will sign off for this week. We hope you are all staying safe, healthy and enjoying your time away from the facility as much as this pandemic allows. Thank you for all you do and all you sacrifice to make ZSE a great place to work. We could not be more proud to serve the membership at this facility.

In Solidarity,

Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore

Weekly Update April 24th

As we approach the end of our second rotation through the crews, we hope that we find everyone in good health and good spirits. Your sacrifice to accommodate this schedule is not going unnoticed. Thank you again for all of your patience and professionalism during these crazy times.

Night Differential

You may notice on Webscheduler that you have a shift assigned to your EA days. This is to accomplish a way to get people night differential. It was negotiated to assign four swing shifts per pay period per person to ensure it was easily and evenly distributed. These shifts are not for recallability purposes. A recall will have to come from the Regional level, and we will have plenty of lead time if or when this is needed.

Dynamic Scheduling Phase 2

Some of you may have seen a list on the internet that showed a bunch of terminal facilities with reduced hours. This wasn’t really meant for public distribution because it isn’t a finished project. Those airports met a certain criteria and the FAA and NATCA still have a lot of work to do internally and with the airport managers before that list is accurate. There aren’t a whole lot of airports that even meet the criteria in Seattle Center and so when the changes are finalized, the impact will be minimal and temporary.

If there is anything we can do for you please reach out via email, text or phone call. You may not see us in the facility, but we are still here, standing by, to serve you.

In Solidarity,

Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore

Derek Adams (360) 510-5913 Derek.adams.natca@gmail.com

Amy Sizemore (253) 880-6414 amatc20@gmail.com

Devin Carlisto (619) 818-5335 devin.carlisto@natca.net

David Blaser (585) 752-6762 d.t.blaser@gmail.com

Jared Zimmerman (801) 635-9184 jaredzimmerman@yahoo.com

Loren Cameron (253) 304-2200 cameronloren@yahoo.com

James Darlington (904) 347-3065 James.Darlington@natca.net

Trevor Laush (360) 790-1356 tlaush@gmail.com

Paul Skorniakoff (253) 332-2066 skorniakoff@comcast.net

Sherri O’Neil (360) 710-2247 sherrip28@hotmail.com

Matt Beckman (206) 406-3264 Matt_Beckman@hotmail.com

Kenny Courts (661) 832-8262 ZLACourts@gmail.com

Drew Stewart (503) 593-8178 drew.s.stewart@gmail.com

Weekly Update April 17th

Well, we’re into the fourth week of dynamic scheduling with no known end in sight. It all seems to be running smoothly but if there is a problem that we’re not aware of, please let us know so we can address it. Employee Assistance Program is available to address a broad and complex body of issues affecting mental and emotional well-being, such as alcohol and other substance abuse, stress, grief, family problems, and psychological disorders. This is a stressful time for everyone and we just want you to know about the help available should you need it. Information is available on the OPM website.

Masks

Some masks that NATCA National designed and ordered will be distributed shortly. These are not by any means medical grade and if nothing else, will remind you not to touch your face. They could be used in addition to another mask that you may already own or I have also heard of some people folding Shop Towels (those sturdy blue paper towels you can find in the auto section of stores) and putting them inside your mask for additional disposable protection. 

Night Differential

NATCA National has been working towards getting some of our differentials paid even when we are in an administrative leave status. The details of this are not completely clear at this time, but it should be rolling out during the next few days/weeks. Once this is finalized, it will still need to be negotiated at the local level to determine exactly what it will look like. We need to verify fair and equitable distribution while still making it an easy implementation by the area reps and schedulers. More to come on this as it progresses. In addition to that, the agency has already been directed to pay any night differentials missed during the first week of dynamic scheduling due to schedules being changed inside of 7 days. We can’t say yet that this will be reflected on the upcoming paycheck, but we will be monitoring this closely as well.

Annual Leave

As we are rapidly approaching the season for higher annual leave usage there are a few things that should be discussed. We are all still entitled to the annual leave that we bid, but we also have the right to convert it to administrative leave. We also can use annual leave during our five days of work, but that obviously leaves the crew short. Since this is such a delicate subject and each person will be approaching their options differently, we ask that you work with your area reps and schedulers to determine exactly what you want to do with your bid time off. It has been suggested that if you are going to leave the commuting area or simply do not want to be subject to recall during the time that you bid, you keep it coded as annual leave. Otherwise, it can all be converted to administrative leave. We realize that there is a lot of nuance to this, so please reach out to your area reps or the Eboard to determine the best course of action for you and your bid time off.

Thank you again for all your hard work and please let us know if we can help with anything,

Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore