|
Brothers and Sisters,
The results of the balloting are in and 8180 voted yes, 8196 voted No. The official certified results will be posted by the National Ballot Committee shortly.
As per the Negotiations Protocol Agreement, the outstanding issues (those issues reached in the final days of bargaining) shall be submitted for binding arbitration. Our first date for arbitration is Wednesday, December 3rd. Until the arbitration is completed and the new contract is awarded, each legacy workgroup will continue to work under its current contract: the LAA Conditional Labor Agreement and the LUS 'Red Book.'
Association of Professional Flight Attendants members voted down a tentative agreement that would have combined the contracts of American Airlines and US Airways flight attendants, the union said Sunday.
The dispute now goes to binding arbitration.
APFA said 8,180 voted yes and 8,196 voted no. AA and US combined have more than 24,000 flight attendants. Of those, 20,986 were eligible to vote, meaning that 78 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots.
Said the union in a brief message to members shortly after 10:30 a.m. Sunday:
“As per the Negotiations Protocol Agreement, the outstanding issues (those issues reached in the final days of bargaining) shall be submitted for binding arbitration. Our first date for arbitration is Wednesday, December 3rd. Until the arbitration is completed and the new contract is awarded, each legacy workgroup will continue to work under its current contract: the LAA Conditional Labor Agreement and the LUS ‘Red Book.’”
“We are, of course, disappointed with today’s outcome,” American said in a statement. “This tentative agreement included industry-leading pay and benefits, and would have provided considerably more economic value and much better work rules than the contract that will be determined by arbitration.”
The contract had come under sharp criticism by many flight attendants who didn’t like various parts of the deal worked out by management and union negotiators.
But the union had warned that the proposed deal provided $193 million in added value to the flight attendants of the two airlines, while the maximum added benefit in an arbitrated decision would be only $111 million.
The $111 million represented how much more the flight-attendant contracts of competing carriers – Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and its Continental Airlines – were worth more in average that the existing American and US Airways contracts.
A “memorandum of understanding” signed before the 2013 merger said that a joint agreement would give flight attendants an industry-standard contract. The $111 million represented what the two sides had calculated was needed to make a joint contract comparable to those at the other airlines.
American said the joint collective bargaining agreement that will come out of the arbitration hearings “will be imposed without ratification—meaning flight attendants won’t have any say in the process. Next steps are to meet with the APFA to prepare for that arbitration process, which is scheduled to begin next month.”
BY: Terry Maxon Dallas Morning News
Download:
|
