Facility Update August 25th

Reloaded Workshop 

The NATCA Reloaded Committee is going to hold a regional class here in Seattle on September 26-27. The class will be from noon Monday until 2pm Tuesday. The workshop is for any Northwest Mountain Region NATCA member who has a desire for self improvement and strengthening their local. The Leadership Workshop will be tailored to our audience, to give you some new tools and dust off some old ones. The workshop is for all members - those with veteran NATCA experience and those that are just starting on their NATCA journey. You don't need a title to be a leader. 

• This will be downtown Seattle. If you plan on staying the night, please register HERE. ****TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO GUARANTEE A ROOM****

Save the Date: NATCA Retirement Planning

Drew has been working with Cambridge Financial Partners to get a person in the building to answer any of your retirement questions. Anthony Lee will be here the afternoon of October 26th and the morning of October 27th.

Activism and Training Expo (ATX)

NATCA will be holding its first Activism and Training Expo (ATX) will be held from Dec. 12-16. This event will be an opportunity for our Union to educate, inspire, and motivate both experienced leaders and new members.

 It will be a five-day event at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas that will showcase all of NATCA’s current training opportunities along with some briefings and education by many of our committee and Article 114 reps regarding their projects. We envision this becoming a biennial event that motivated NATCA members can attend to increase their knowledge on a variety of work and safety related topics and expand our Union’s influence.

 Whether you can attend for the entire five days or only one, the Expo will provide value to any member.

Registration information will be forthcoming but save the dates today.

I’ll be out of the facility on leave next week but will be able to check emails if you need anything.

Amy Sizemore

All Members Meeting Minutes 8/13

Hey everybody! The minutes from the all members meeting last Saturday are below.

Chico

All Members Meeting 8/19/22 Rainbow Cafe

Start time:  3:32 PM Food:  Appetizers provided by ZSE Natca Local

Attendance:  Amy Sizemore (FacRep), Drew Stewart (VP), James “Chico” Eastham (Secretary), Matt Braunstein, Katrina Linder

Constitutional Amendments - 

There are a couple changes to our local constitution.  The first change is to make elections easier.  It changes the start date for elected officials to January 1st rather than have it tied to the first day of the first pay period for that year.  The second change removes the nomination window (August 1-15 currently) and changes it to a deadline.  The election committee will set that deadline.  There was a motion to accept these changes, and it passed unanimously.

Last Meeting’s Minutes - 

There was a motion to adopt the minutes from the last meeting.  The motion passes.

Construction - 

There are a lot of scheduled construction projects for the building, but most of them have been postponed.  They are going to replace the control room doors, repave the parking lot, build an ADA compliant walkway, among other things.  They were postponed for now.  There are also some very tentative early plans for changing out the kitchen area (former HTH Cafe) and making it more accessible and usable for everyone.

Safety Class - 

There was a safety class recently that four people were able to attend.  It went over things like QC and the LSC.  There was some good information for our facility.  We are going to try and get more official time for the LSC to do their work, instead of having them solely work during their free time.

Staffing - 

All areas are pretty short at the moment.  As of right now, the D-area is getting a transfer, the B-area is getting a new academy grad, the A-area is short but they currently don’t have the staffing to train any more new controllers, the C-area is also short and may get the next person in the building.  If we get another NCEPT list we might be able to get one person from that.

Nearly every facility in the NAS is doing six day workweeks.  Until ZSE is doing that, it could be tough to get more staffing.  Staffing is being directed to those facilities that are working a lot of overtime.  It is possible that they adjust our numbers down if they see our building working fine with the people we have.  Some facilities are doing 25 min breaks and 5.5 hours TOP.

Nationally, FAA Finances are the ones who control staffing levels.  Next September the FAA Reauthorization bill will be coming up, and NATCA is pushing to take controllers out of that.  Pay is difficult to negotiate because federal employees are capped.

Dan wonders if the FAA has considered trying to change how they place new controllers and if NATCA could provide any input there.  There seem to be so many that certify and then look to transfer.  Unfortunately, NATCA doesn’t represent any of the new controllers at the academy, so they really can’t help with that.

Meeting Adjourned 4:21 PM

Facility Update August 12th

All Members Meeting

All members meeting tomorrow at the Rainbow Cafe in Auburn. The meeting will start at 3:30 but show up as early as 3 to get food, etc. Agenda items:

• Local Constitution Amendments

• LR update

• Construction

• Safety Class Recap

Links:

Rainbow Cafe Map

Proposed Constitutional Amendments

Last meeting’s minutes

WiFi Outage

There will be an intermittent WiFi outage on Tuesday. The hardware has finally arrived to start changing the system over to an individual login rather than a shared password. Expect more on that later when it’s finalized.

Amazing Work

Last week there were a couple of days that Canada ATC had critical staffing issues and they ended up having to route many aircraft into our airspace so as to keep traffic safely moving. I got a bunch of emails and texts expressing gratitude from the RVP of that area and he wanted to buy you all some pizza. I will be bringing in some tomorrow around 2pm.

Thank you all for the amazing work you do!

Amy Sizemore

NNM Member in need

Earlier this week, Seattle Tower controller, Jeff Leonard was in a terrible accident. He is in the ICU with severe brain injuries. Please consider a donation to help his family through expenses during this battle ahead.

Thank you.

Donation Link

Facility Update July 29th

Restroom Closures

August 1-4th there will be a series of short bathroom closures, the list is in your CEDAR. The biggest impact on us will be the bathrooms near the gym. Those will be closed from August 8th to September 9th. The lockers that are inside the bathrooms will be removed and will not be put back in there. If you have anything in those lockers then please remove it. I will work with the 510 office to ensure that they are not out of the facility right away just in case though. All the closures are related to bringing the facility up to the current ADA code.

Upcoming All Members Meeting

The next scheduled meeting is coming up on Saturday, August 13th at 3pm. It will be at the Rainbow Cafe in Auburn, right next to the Safeway. Our current agenda items are:

• LR

• Construction

• Schedule

• Safety Class Recap

If you have any other suggestions, please let us know and we can add that to the agenda. As always, food and non-alcoholic beverages are provided.

T-shirt Order

The forms have been closed and the order sent in. Hopefully they won’t take too long, I can’t wait to see them!

Have a great weekend!

Amy