Weekly Update May 29th

Good evening all, hope this finds you well. In an effort not to inundate you with email blasts we took last Friday off, but we are back with some needed information. 

5/5 Schedules

We’ve officially transitioned to our 5/5 schedules with some additional EA. As with everything up to this point, I’m sure there will be many questions and “what if” scenarios. We will continue to address those as they come up. One major concern is getting recalled for a 0600 in the middle of the night. This was discussed with Don and he assured us that only OMs will be making that call. This means that a call must come prior to 2200 before the OM goes home or the OMIC will have to call the OM at home in the morning prior to their shift to make the recall for the dayshift prior to 0600. Apparently OMs are people too and don’t want to be called until they are awake for their shift, so we can expect this call from them sometime between 0430 and 0600. If at any time this becomes a problem please notify an Eboard member and we will put an end to it immediately. Many of the other questions we are hearing are regarding leave, turning in leave, converting EA to leave and other similar scenarios. We will admit that we do not have all the answers to every situation and are learning as we go just as many of you are. This pandemic has forced us into uncharted territory so please be patient with us as we continue to address these questions and negotiate with management on a reasonable solution. In the meantime, we urge you to work closely with your crew to look out for and take care of each other. Swap EA amongst yourselves (within your crew). Give each other a heads up if you think you need to call in sick and they may get recalled. The more we work together with our brothers and sisters, the more sustainable this situation will be. 

Charity

Some of you may have seen ZSE mentioned in the NATCA Insider email last week. You all should be very proud of your contribution to our community. We are close to hitting our next $500 milestone and donating our next check. Donations are starting to slow down so we may start to think about putting an end date on this soon. If you’d still like to help out, Venmo @Amanda-Sizemore1 

Masks

By now, you should have received a second, better quality NATCA mask. If you didn’t, please get a hold of your area rep. On May 18th, King County put out a mask recommendation for most public places. So far, masks are not required at any air traffic control facilities but it is a good way to keep our germs to ourselves. The whole system works better when everyone that is able to wear a mask does so.

If you choose to wear a mask, just some reminders:

• Your mask should cover your nose and mouth at all times.

• Always wash your hands with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer before you put on a face covering and after removing it.

• Wash your face covering after each use (daily).

As the state begins to open up, please remember to take appropriate precautions for yourselves and your families. We feel it is going to be a very difficult summer with this pandemic looming over us, but we are confident that with all the precautions we are taking, ZSE can get through this together.

Thank you,

Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore

(For those that read down this far, good job! I miss you all very much and truly can’t wait to get back in there and see my people again! It’s so boring at my house! -Amy)

Weekly Update May 15th, Part Two

As you know, everything about this virus has put our world in a constant state of change. Last week, we announced a four hour recall period for your “on call” EA days. The reality is that just doesn’t work for the day and the swing so that has changed a little. Again, this does not apply to your full five days of EA when we transition to the five and five schedule.

• The recall time for the mid will remain at four hours prior to the shift start time.

• The recall time for the day and the swing will be up to the start time of what would have been your assigned shift. We also agreed that if someone is called just prior to their shift start they need to make reasonable effort to get there as soon as possible. If you find yourself with an obligation that prevents you from getting there within a reasonable time such as childcare, please let the OM or supervisor know and then make every effort to get there as soon as you can.

• The OMIC will have the ability to recall an employee, but a recall should not be the first course of action. Other mitigations should be considered prior to recall (shorter breaks, moving sups around, etc.)

• If at any time the recall procedures are not working out for either party, we will sit down and renegotiate to figure out something that will work.

We spoke about this in our last update, but we just want to reiterate that this is a very delicate situation. We cannot mess around with any of this. If you are on recall, please answer your phone. Remember that these are our co-workers and our brothers and sisters pulling the weight to make dynamic scheduling work. We are doing an unbelievable job in looking out for each other. Please keep it up and hopefully we make it through this pandemic in good health but also pride in knowing the sacrifices we made to keep ourselves and our NATCA family safe.

 During the negotiations for recall, we also discussed some contingencies for bid leave, NPTL and spot leave.

• If someone is choosing to take bid leave during their days on, they will have the option to take leave on what would have been their RDOs if we were on normal schedules.

• If someone is taking bid leave and normally you would have one person on EA, the bid leave will supersede someone being on EA.

• If employees cancel bid leave because of the 5/5 schedule, we agreed that upon negotiations to return to normal bid schedules, the leave books will immediately take effect again. We want to ensure that you feel comfortable giving your leave back due to 5/5 scheduling while still having assurances that you will still have your leave opportunity when life begins to normalize.

• If you know you have a particular day you need off, please try to get that request in prior to publication. The schedulers and area reps are continuing to work very hard to make this schedule function as painlessly as they can. As far as spot leave, once a schedule is published, the “on call” EA is going to be published as approved. If you have a spot leave request it will fall in line after the “on call” EA. Please work with your crew to accommodate spot leave requests. There is nothing preventing us from trading days of EA and furthermore, if it’s something you want guaranteed, there is nothing preventing us from changing EA to AL to avoid recall. As mentioned before, this thing is working because we are willing to make it work and take care of each other.

 Some of this might be a little confusing, if you have questions, please let us know. Thank you for your understanding while the Eboard works through these changes together.

Derek Adams and Amy Sizemore

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