Union Negotiations

AFSS5602 Junior Member

I would first like to say congratulations to the FAA Air Traffic Controllers out there today who after years of working under imposed work rules and horrid pay, finally won the battle and through arbitration secured a 27% pay raise across all pay bands over the next 3 years. This will bring controller pay much more in line with the skill and stress required to do the job.

Flight Service union negotiations are in the 2nd week between Lockheed Martin and the IAM. Information on union proposals, company proposals, and tentative agreements can be accessed at IAM :: AFSS Campaign
The Union Negotiation team is doing a great job in providing proposals that will greatly enhance the work environment for specialists and service to pilots. Seniority, Pay, and Leave as of right now are still unknown, but I will keep this section updated as more proposals and tentative agreements come about.

Here is a quick summary of some proposals that would greatly enhance service and the work environment.

-Specialists only have to be logged onto 1 AOR and take calls that originate only from that AOR (AOR's consist of 3-5 states). This would put an end to Specialists being forced to brief an entire half of the United States in areas they are not certified/trained and have no clue about.

-In-flight Radio positions cannot be combined up between 6am-10pm. This means that each radio sector must be worked by a single employee. As of now, sometimes a single person must watch up to 160 radio frequencies simultaneously across several states.

-Specialists will be given up to 5min between pre-flight briefing calls to reset weather maps and equipment. As of now, specialists are expected to take phone calls back to back for several hours straight. This results in severe stress and fatigue from giving one 5-15 min brief after the other after the other hour after hour.

-Specialists will not have to work more than 1 Flight Data sector at a time. This will for example put an end to roll over flight data calls which force a specialist who works the South-East US AOR to get a clearance from New York Center for a pilot in New York.

These are just some proposals and as of right now there is not a counter company proposal listed on the website. To view all proposals you can go to the website listed above.

Specialists will probably notice that the above work rules would be great, but we cannot provide service under those rules with only 800 specialists. This would hopefully not only put a stop to the supposed 200 more layoffs this fall, but allow for more employees to be hired. Right now Lockheed gets money from the FAA to have over 1000 specialists on payroll. Lockheed like many unethical contractors has decided to cut staffing to pocket the extra money, which basically means they are ripping the government off and ruining peoples lives for no reason.

Matty13 Senior Member

Good luck with negotiations! Your proposals seem entirely reasonable. Your work and congratulations are appreciated by this radar rat.

otterstrom Trusted Member of NATCA

hope all goes well for you guys.

noid Curtis E. Carr Jawja

on average, the IAM gets about a $1-2 pay raise as well. Hope you all get a good deal. I especially hope they are awarded back-pay as well....

AFSS5602 Junior Member

An agreement was reached between the IAM Bargaining unit and Lockheed Martin's bargaining unit late Friday night. All the details are set to be released Tuesday the 18th with voting taking place on the 19th.

noid Curtis E. Carr Jawja

Awesome! Let us know how it pans out.

Was the backpay strictly between IAM and DoL or IAM and LockMart?

AFSS5602 Junior Member

The contract should be online at the website listed above tomorrow sometime. If we receive back pay it would most likely have to come straight from Lockheed since they already have received the money we were supposed to be paid.

Voting will take place on Wednesday across the country. If specialists vote the contract in, it will be a 3 year contract. We had a good bargaining team and we are confident that they have secured the best deal they could for us. In a worst case scenery if the majority of Union members votes the contract down a vote will be scheduled soon after to Strike against Lockheed Martin. I am very skeptical that a majority of specialists would vote the contract down let alone strike though.