Facility Update July 22nd

T-Shirt Order

If you haven’t filled out your order for your shirt, please do so right away. We need to get everyone’s together before we can send this in. If you do not want one, please let us know so we can update the list. Reminder: our local board is paying for this shirt, there is no additional cost.

Men’s cut shirt form

Women’s cut shirt form

UNUM

I cannot stress the value of this program enough. If your household is dependent on your income, this is something you should look into. I put the flyer in the bulletin board outside the control room but basically if you are medically incapacitated for 90 days or more, the benefits kick in. Then it’s 50% of your monthly gross earnings for up to 5 years. The cost is $37 a pay period. Please consider this program. Website: natcadisability.com

NATCA Benefits

While we’re on the subject, you should go to natcabenefits.com to see all the other stuff your membership gets you. The other massive benefit is the retirement seminars, the list of online and in person dates are in there. This can save you thousands of dollars over the span of your retirement.

Amy Sizemore

Local Update 7/16

All,

First off, here are some upcoming important dates:

• July 20th is the last day to request EA to go to CFS, please follow the directions at CFS Registration

• UNUM registration open until September 28th at UNUM Registration

Internet Outage 7/23

Saturday, 7/23 the internet will be out for the majority of the swingshift for some upgrades. After the upgrades are complete we will begin the process of switching to individual user accounts. More instruction to follow on that as Devin Carlisto and Matt Coughlin get it set up. Big thanks to them for all their hard work.

Solidarity Event

The cruise around Lake Washington could not have gone better. The weather was perfect, the food was great and bonding amongst the people from all the Seattle facilities was abundant. The primary objective of NATCA is obviously to protect and advance the working conditions of our members but there is a secondary mission and that is to create and strengthen an additional support structure for us to lean on in a stressful career with few parallels to the “normal” world. When we are able to put together these events for you all it helps us to build relationships that are helpful in our day to day lives. Thank you to all that attended and thank you to those at work during this event as well. If there is any interest in a holiday party, perhaps even in January, please let us know. We need volunteers to work on that too. 

Masks are coming back…some places.

Look, here’s the thing, masks might be on their way back. The community transmission rate has been determined to be high enough for masks in several facilities in our region. This is determined by more than just case counts, hospitalizations and other factors go in to determining the transmission rate. You can read more about how it is determined here. We wanted to give you all a heads up because the trends are not in our favor. We have dodged it for now but we may not be able to for much longer and we want you to all understand the situation. If masks do come back here, please don’t mess around with it. Just put the mask on. We have seen several cases in our region already where controllers have decided to “take a stand” on masking and it is not going to go well for them. We can debate the efficacy of masking all we want, but if masks come back in our building, we will be having that debate with masks on. These folks that decide they want to not wear a mask when required are not “standing up for something” they are being insubordinate and will be charged as such. Trust me, the agency will absolutely relish the opportunity to start passing out suspensions like candy if you choose not to wear your mask. The MOU regarding masking does allow for Article 8 and ProStan to be used to address non-compliance before “initiating other compliance measures.” So that option will be available but if it doesn’t end with your mask going on then discipline will be next.

All that being said - we are still mask free. But we don’t know what the future holds and we want you all to be prepared.

In Solidarity,

Drew & Amy

Local Update 6/29

All,

Hey everybody! Hope y’all enjoyed the 2 days of summer we had. Here’s the rundown for this week:

UNUM OPEN SEASON!

I know there are several of you who have been asking about this and waiting for it to happen so here it is! Open enrollment is now until September 26th but don’t delay, you never know when you might need it! UNUM is long-term disability insurance provided exclusively to NATCA members so please sign up. I highly recommend it, if you have any questions about it or wish to sign up visit www.NATCAdisability.com.

SHIFT START TIME CHANGES

I worded the above thing that way intentionally to try to grab your attention. As we enter negotiations for the 2023 Schedule MOU we wanted to bring up something that the agency might try to do on their own but we also might not fight them on if they do depending on what you all think. The idea is to move the flex time to be 30 minutes AFTER your shift start time. This would mean that all 0700s would become 0630s with a flex to 0700 and so on. The impact to you would be nonexistent other than having to remember that when you look at the schedule at see 0630, you cannot show up at 0600. The benefit would be a workaround to one of the dumbest things that CRU-art causes to happen. That is if you have a 1500 and you take leave on that shift, you cannot work until 0800 the next day because the system codes you as having worked from 1500-2300 even though you were on leave. So to get your 9 hours in between shifts, you can’t show up until 0800. I assume that this has impacted some of you at some point in the past. If we make this change then the system would code you as leave from 1430-2030 and allow you to sign in at 0730 the next day. Make sense? Please click HERE to help us gather some information on how this change would be received by the workforce.

LOCAL CONSTITUTION CHANGES

At our next local meeting on Saturday, August 13th (Time and Location TDB) we will be voting on proposed changes to our Local Constitution. In accordance with Article XIV Section 6 of the National Constitution, we are required to post these proposed changes 30 days prior to the meeting. You can see the proposed changes HERE. Scroll to Article VIII to see the first proposed change. This adds a sentence to Section 1 that states when terms will begin and deletes the old Section 3 stating when terms are to begin. The other change is to delete Section 2 from Article XI. This will give us more leeway in how we conduct our Local Election nominations. There are still DoL guidelines we have to follow regarding nominations. Deleting this will untie our hands a little on the dates for the nomination period. Please contact Drew or Amy if you have any questions regarding these amendments. There will be time for debate at the meeting before we vote on these as well.

T-SHIRTS

Don’t forget to sign up for your NATCA ZSE T-shirt! Remember this is a shirt we are paying for as a local. I hate to use the word free because it isn’t technically “free” as we are using your dues to pay for it, but it is included in your membership.

WOMEN’S CUT FORM

MEN’S CUT FORM

If you would like more info on sizing, design, etc. of each shirt, here are the links:

Women’s cut info

Men’s cut info

If you are wondering about the sizing, the shirts seem to run about a half a size small.

That’s all for this week. Looking forward to seeing all of you on 7/13 for the Argosy Cruise!

Drew

Facility Update June 20th

Additional CA-1 Guidance

There have been reports of some people that filed a CA-1 getting a call from an “FAA Liaison.” We do not recommend you talk to this person at all. You are not obligated to answer this call at all or give them any information. Everything you do should be through the official CA-1 process and in writing. The FAA Liaison is not there to help you, they are trying to help the FAA deny claims. Please let us know if you are getting these phone calls.

New ZSE T-Shirt and Logo

ZSE has a new logo! We’ve been so excited to share this with everybody but have had to wait to iron out all the details. The e-board voted to purchase a t-shirt for every member at ZSE. All we need from you is for you to decide whether you’d like a women’s or men’s cut shirt and then fill out the corresponding form. We’ll get the order out as soon as all the forms are filled so the sooner they’re finished, the better.

WOMEN’S CUT FORM

MEN’S CUT FORM

If you would like more info on sizing, design, etc. of each shirt, here are the links:

Women’s cut info

Men’s cut info

If you are wondering about the sizing, the shirts seem to run about a half a size small.

LR Update:

We received a “sustained” response to the COP grievance we mentioned in the previous LR update. This is a big deal because the agency has taken a stance on our last few grievances of admitting no fault and accepting no responsibility but this time they actually did.  They sustained our grievance which means they also agreed that they were not following the law and they agreed to follow the law in the future.  Novel idea, eh? The result of this for you is that if you call and inform them you filed a CA-1 and are requesting to be placed on COP, they SHALL do it. This is handy because that way you don’t have to burn annual or sick and wait until they get it back to you after the CA-1 is complete.

We also received and accepted a settlement offer for the OT skip grievance. This was a favorable offer so we took it. An important note regarding “settling” is that the agency makes all of their offers contingent on it not being an admission to violating any rule or law.  This is, however, tantamount to a “win” for us.

Have a wonderful warm and sunny week!

Amy Sizemore and Drew Stewart

Front of the shirt

Back of the shirt

Facility Update June 10th

Please send in your favorite Father’s Day pictures to the NNM Communications team (or nnm-comms@natca.org if that link doesn’t work) so we can commemorate you all. I would love to see a strong ZSE presence (ZLC is getting kinda cocky, we need more than them!)

Facility Construction Projects

All the construction around the facility is going to not only continue but will start to ramp up starting this month. Most of the changes will center around getting the building in compliance with ADA requirements. Changes coming: 

• The control room doors will be replaced. This involves building a temporary door near the OM desk so that the floor can remain secure. 

• This building does not meet the requirements for accessible parking spots. Lots of changes but most notably, the front four “VIP” will be converted to accessible spots and the ones near the cafeteria will revert back to standard spaces. 

Lots more but those will be happening the soonest. Any questions please email our OSHA rep, Patrick Long (pjexpo01@gmail.com).

BWS/AL/CIC/OT MOUs

We will be starting negotiations soon, if you have any suggested changes or things you would like to see addressed, please let us know.

Have a good weekend!

Amy