Hey ZSE membership! It’s Chico! I’m taking over as Secretary of our Local. I’m still learning the ropes of this job, but I’m enjoying being back involved in NATCA. I do know that one of the major parts of this position is writing down the minutes at every meeting and I did that for the meeting we had last Wednesday March 16th. The full recap of the meeting is below.
Before you read those meeting notes, I wanted to quickly hit on one thing we talked about at the meeting. We want to know what you as the members want to see from us on the E-board. We want to hear from you on this! Many COVID restrictions are being lifted now, which is making it possible to do more things that bring us together. The last two years made it impossible to do any sort of event to help us build camaraderie and get to know one another better. Now that we seem to be turning the corner on this, we want to know what kind of things you would like to see happen. When this was brought up last week at the meeting it was met with a very positive reaction. These were some of the ideas suggested:
Charity work
Events (Holiday party, picnics, whirlyball (was fun last time), etc)
T-shirts
Birth and Bereavement committee
One other idea that we forgot to bring up at the meeting was having some type of sports team. I played on a softball team way back when I started here. We could also do something like a bowling league, frisbee golf meet-ups, pickleball?
Anyway, we are looking for ideas on things to do, and also looking for people who can help plan these types of things. Let us know if that sounds like something you would be interested in doing. If we want to do another holiday party, we have to start planning that soon.
Ok, that’s enough from me, the meeting notes are below,
Chico
All Members Meeting 3/16/22 Shasta Conference Room
Start time: 11:06 AM Food: Jersey Mike Subs, provided by ZSE Natca Local
Attendance: See attached
Wi-fi Protocol -
Matt Coughlin and Devin Carlisto have been working on a new program for Wi-fi. We will be using member numbers to log on instead of having a password. We want to make sure that it remains a NATCA benefit. If people need help connecting, send them to the E-Board to get them help. There is going to be a big upgrade in bandwidth. It is a very technical job, and there are a lot of details still being ironed out.
2023 Bidding -
There has been an idea kicked around about bidding slots. It has never been done here at ZSE, but other centers do it this way. One positive is that you know the exact time you are up to bid. The counter to that is that if the bid is moving quicker than the allotted slots, somebody can still wait until their slot before bidding. This would potentially be a slower process than the current one. Ligaya mentioned that at her previous facility they never had an issue with that and the slots seemed to work well. We are looking for more feedback on this idea.
There was some discussion about primetime leave and potentially setting certain portions of the calendar as primetime rather than the entire year, and maybe getting more slots there. Amy will be looking into how other centers do it to get some ideas. Drew mentions that having three slots per day all year is typically the most advantageous. If we make the summer months primetime we will lose leave slots outside of the summer. Derek says that if we try to switch to summer prime time it is a steep uphill battle because we really don’t have enough staffing to justify any more slots.
If you have any ideas or tools that you think could help with the bidding process, bring them to your rep.
CIC’s -
There was a brief discussion about CIC’s and whether or not we are happy with the current process. Kevin T. mentioned that he would like to see more CIC’s as they currently only have two supervisors. Some follow up with Dan will be done on that. Aside from that, there seemed to be no issues with CIC currently.
Vision for ZSE NATCA Local -
Amy and Drew want to know what you as members want to see from your local. What sort of things would you like to see happen? Some examples were discussed such as charity work, T-shirts, parties, picnics, chili cookoff for super bowl, a births and bereavement fund that would send flowers or something similar, etc. This was met with a lot of interest throughout the room. Whirlyball was also suggested as another event that was successful in the past.
Currently our local does donate to NCF (NATCA Charitable Fund) which in turn helps local charities in the area. We also have done backpack drives, and other things. If you are involved in any charity that could use a donation, let the E-board know and they can work on trying to make that happen.
If you have interest in helping to plan events or get T-shirts printed or any of these sorts of things please let Amy, Drew, or your rep know.
Mandated TOP (Time on Position) -
There has been an issue recently with supervisors enacting a blanket policy of how the floor should be staffed as opposed to staffing it when need exists. This shouldn’t happen without being negotiated first. The supervisors can staff the floor as they see fit, but it has to be visited on a shift to shift basis. With that being said, traffic is coming back and if there is enough staffing, sectors should be split. You may be able to work it combined, but by splitting the sector you are splitting the workload and providing better service as a result. Opening more sectors also demonstrates a need for more controllers to the agency. If we are constantly getting by with only a few sectors open and a lot of people on break, they will use that to make the case for us having fewer controllers. There is a workgroup that will be reconvening soon that is looking at this question and questions like it. Which sectors are open and for how long? How many people do we have? How many do we need? You may be sitting at an empty sector at times and thinking it could be combined, but just know that by combining it and taking more breaks we are showing that we don’t need as many controllers.
Alex describes a particular facility where the staffing is actually so short that they are going ATC zero at times because of sick hits and/or leave. They will take staffing from places that don’t need it to help fill a need elsewhere. If you are getting shorter breaks by having more sectors open, that is just a short term pain for a long term gain. If leave is being denied, then you want to start making an argument, but short of that, if we have the staffing, we should be comfortable opening sectors even if you could get by without doing that.
Lindsay wonders if there is a way to get our production more accurately captured by the people who are looking at this. For example, training time, ELMS, briefings, etc are not counted as actual work time.
Alex says that it hasn’t really been an issue where the FAA is coming to us and saying look at how little you are working. However, if we want to make this case that we are working more than is actually being captured in the numbers they are using, then we need to make sure that the cru-ART is accurate. We need to keep track and be accurate so that when we go to make this argument we have solid numbers backing it up.
Drew says we can get the word out to membership about making sure your name is in the right place on the cru-ART.
Derek says he has heard the number of 5.5 hours of plugged in time as a target TOP. This will always be a pushing point for them. We have to advocate for ourselves.
This will continue to be discussed.
Meeting adjourned at 12:02 PM
