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AMFA - SWA Facilities Maintenance Technician Negotiations Update #4
Oct 29, 2013

Participants for AMFA:
Michael Nelson – Region II Director
Bob Cramer – Local 4 Airline Representative
Matt Townsend – Local 11 Airline Representative
Shane Flachman – Local 18 Airline Representative
Mike Young – Local 32 Airline Representative
Danny York – Facility Maintenance DAL
Lucas Middlebrook – Legal Counsel

Participants for Southwest Airlines:
Mike Ryan – VP, Labor Relations
Gerry Anderson – Sr Director, Labor Relations

Cindy Nagle – Sr Director, Labor Relations
Clint Auton – Director, Corporate Facilities
Tim Hooyman – Sr Manager, Corporate Facilities


The Negotiating Committee is providing this update to the AMFA Membership at Southwest Airlines. This is the only official authorized source of negotiating communications by the Committee.

We began the latest Facilities Maintenance Technician (FMT) Negotiation session on Monday, October 21, 2013. After a brief review of where we left off earlier this month, the Company presented their 401K/Profit Sharing and No Strike – No Lockout counter offers. Both of these sections had only minor modifications to what we had countered at the last session. We pointed out a few oversights and notified the Company that we would review these documents further before finalizing.

The Company also had their counter offer ready for the Training section. Their Training counter offer contained a few more notable changes including one that changed the minimum amount of training to 20 hours a year per technician from the 40 hours that we had proposed. After much discussion regarding their current practices and understanding the fact that this group does not have a dedicated training department, we agreed to accept the 20 hour minimum. We did, however, secure a training sign-up and award procedure based on seniority which includes language to ensure the proper technicians are being allowed the training slots. We finished the day clarifying our intent in regards to the Lead FMT Classification that we proposed. We also worked in committee caucus on our Grievance Procedure counter offer.

On Tuesday, we discovered that some of the sections we were working on as a Committee away from negotiations were going to be affected by the Company’s new Sick Policy Proposal. The Company said "Leaves of Absences," "Sick Leave and On-The-Job Injuries," "Insurance Benefits," and possibly more sections would be affected by the Company’s new Sick Policy Proposal which they plan to present to us after the first of the year. We also had a lengthy discussion regarding what we see as a trend to alter and manipulate current white book language just for the sake of making it different. The Company contends its intent is to clean up the document by correcting structure, punctuation, and out dated language. We were also told by the Company that even where we use current language for the FMTs, "this" leadership does not recognize any intent understandings to the white book language as interpreted in the past by the Maintenance Department.

This was a pretty contentious session, but we did manage to come to a tentative agreement (TA) on several sections including No Strike – No Lockout, 401K/Profit Sharing, and Training. Although this was our last face-to-face session for 2013 due to varying holiday schedules, we intend to continue work and pass proposals via email until our next session scheduled for January 14 and 15, 2014.


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Centennial, CO 80112
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