Three-hundred Continental members participated in the Seniority Integration Survey constructed by your local elected Seniority Integration Committee. The following are the results of that survey.
In rating the level of importance with regards to seniority, those taking the survey said job protection was the most important, shift bidding was second most important, bidding on vacancies was third, vacation bidding was fourth and pass travel was fifth.
With regards to creating “fence” agreements that would limit an employee’s ability to use seniority to move from point to point, 50.7% said this was extremely important, 12.7% said it was very important, 15% said it was important, 13.6% said it was not important and 8% were undecided.
With regard to Lead and Inspector seniority, 62.7% said seniority should be by craft and 37.3% said seniority should be by time in a particular classification.
With regard to the importance of creating a provision to prevent furloughed employees from bumping active employees during the integration process, 89% said this was extremely important, 7.3% said it was very important, 2% said it was important and 1.7% said it was not important.
With regard to which option those taking the survey considered to be the most fair and equitable way to integrate seniority for the purpose of furlough/recall, 53.3% said relative seniority, 24.7% said date of hire and 22% said rank ratio.
With regard to which option those taking the survey considered to be the most fair and equitable way to integrate seniority for the purpose of bidding for vacancies, 50.9% said relative seniority, 30.2% said date of hire and 18.9% said rank ratio.
With regard to which option those taking the survey considered to be the most fair and equitable way to integrate seniority for the purpose of pass travel, 45.6% said date of hire, 39.3% said relative ratio and 15.1% said rank ratio.
With regard to which option those taking the survey considered to be the most fair and equitable way to integrate seniority for the purpose of shift bidding, 53.1% said relative seniority, 27.2% said date of hire and 19.7% said rank ratio.
With regard to which option those taking the survey considered to be the most fair and equitable way to integrate seniority for the purpose of vacation bidding, 45% said relative seniority, 37.9% said date of hire and 17.1% said rank ratio.
There were several other questions in the comment section of the survey. Some of those questions included but were not limited to the following .What type of seniority (craft or classification) will be used to determine position on the combined list for Leads and Inspectors? What happens to furloughed UAL technicians currently working at CAL when we integrate the lists? What will happen to those CAL employees who had their Company seniority adjusted for certain types of leaves? While these and more are very good questions that will be determined as we move forward, they have not been answered yet.
In early February, the principal Officers and Business Agents of all the pertinent Locals are scheduled to meet to share ideas about the make-up of the System Steering Committee (a committee made up of rank and file members from both UAL and CAL whose primary purpose is to share ideas for a joint Collective Bargaining Agreement), the Negotiating Committee and the Seniority Integration Committee. It will be these committees, comprised of rank and file members from both CAL and UAL who will work to answer the aforementioned questions.
As this process unfolds the membership will be updated through the Airline Division’s “Week in Review”, “The Mechanics Dispatch”, various Local (www.ibt210mx.typepad.com ) and International websites, bulletin boards in the workplace, and email blasts to those member that have signed up to receive them. If you haven’t signed up to receive email notifications please contact the Union office to get on the local e-mail database.
A special thanks goes out to the following members of your local Seniority Integration Committee for their hard work: Bill Horn (Chair), Ned Kugel, John Benevento, Jim Pannone, Pedro Chappotin, Hector Genao and Peter Morales.