Mesaba Negotiations update: June 21, 2006
The AMFA negotiating team did meet with Mesaba management this past Monday and Tuesday.
On Monday, we met at the Pan Am Training Facility and discussed further the proposal that we had received from Mesaba. The main point of the discussion was the
AMFA headcount that Mesaba had included on the proposal that we had received on May 31. On this proposal, Mesaba had the AMFA population for the assumed 49
Saab business plan at 166 members. This was an increase from the headcount of 156 that Mesaba had used in the court filings in January for the first 1113c motion.
When questioned about this, Mesaba's reply was that this number was an increase due to the possibility of the Saab C-checks coming back in house. Mesaba's asserted
that the latest proposal includes the right to do the heavy checks in house and includes an additional 30 members to do that. Without the heavy check, the assumed
AMFA population would be 136. There was nothing in the costing sheets to reflect any type of credit to AMFA for the additional loss of 20 heads or for the savings realized
from doing the heavy checks in house. AMFA asserted that this additional headcount reduction is unfair based upon the 1113 SAAB 49 baseline Business Plan without
an associated credit and that we will fight this additional injustice to our members on the fairness and equitable issue. We also inquired as to when or if Mesaba was
going to inform us of this change. The Company claimed that there was no intent to withhold information. The session was lively and at times even heated and,
unfortunately, no resolution was achieved concerning this issue. There was also no discussion as to where the heavy checks would be done if brought back in house.
On Tuesday, AMFA provided its latest comprehensive proposal to Mesaba. Our proposal meets and exceeds Mesaba's ask from AMFA. We are currently at 106% of
Mesaba's target (we allowed a cushion in case our true-up costing numbers are currently valued too high as differences still exist between the Company's and AMFA's
assumptions). In our proposal, nine articles would remain at current book while others had changes to them that result in definite cost savings to Mesaba. We also had a
line item for credit for the additional 20 members that Mesaba is cutting that resulted in us being able reduce the current proposed wage and premium cut to 5% and
allowed us make some costing changes from our last proposal. The additional cut of 20 of our members earns us a credit if the C-check is not returned to Mesaba.
Conversely, if the Saab C-check is returned to Mesaba, then we would have a credit for what is being saved by not farming it out. This number could be more or less than
what we currently have in our proposal.
The AMFA negotiating Committee offered to go off the record to continue discussing our contract throughout the week as Mesaba had requested in their latest letter to
us. Mesaba declined the offer, including off the record discussions and informed us on Tuesday night that they would like us to rethink our proposal. As a reminder, the first day of the second 1113 hearings on Mesaba's latest motion to make changes to the collective bargaining agreements of ALPA, AFA, and AMFA
will begin on Monday, June 26.
Nate