AMFA National - Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association

On Tuesday June 7, 2005 open contract negotiations between the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association and Alaska Airlines continued at the Gold Coast Center in SeaTac.

June 6 through 10, 2005

Participants for AMFA:
Louie Key – Region 1 Director
Alan Templeman – Local 14 Airline Representative
Earl Clark – Local 9 Airline Representative
Russ Grant – Local 17 Area Representative
Kevin McCormick – National Administrator

Participants for Alaska Airlines:
Kurt Kinder – Director of Line Maintenance
Dave Schwartz – Manager, M&E Union Relations
Steve Zerda – Director, Maint. Planning & Mat’l. Control
Elizabeth Ryan – Manager, Labor Relations
Ronald Henson - Attorney at Law, Ford & Harrison LLP

The proposal contained responses to all of the components addressed in the Company’s proposal.

The Company expressed extreme disappointment in our proposal. They apparently expect us to fully embrace their concept of "market based compensation."

Defining what the market actually is on all the components of a contract can be a very subjective endeavor. Even if you take a snapshot of current industry practices trying to determine a standard is difficult at best.

The approached changed back to breaking the comprehensive proposal into individual Articles and trying to resolve those Articles.

Therefore, we moved into Article 4, Classification of Work. Recall the Company had proposed increasing the lead to technician ratio to 1 lead for 9 technicians. We were successful in reaching agreement with minor changes to the language with an increase of one technician per lead. The language would now read: Where more than 5 technicians are on duty and on the same shift one shall be lead. The inspection lead ratio remained unchanged. Article 4 was tentatively agreed to and signed.

We moved onto the difficult issue of health insurance coverage and premiums. Conceptual agreement was reached on an annually adjusted phase in toward the management’s health plan and costs. There would be no change to the employee contribution through 2005 and caps on the increases in the phase in years of 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Once at the 2009 rates, those rates will remain fixed until renegotiated.

The next Article addressed was Article 6, Overtime. They Company had proposed adjusting the triggers for doubletime and eliminating the paid lunch during overtime periods. Compromise was reached with doubletime unchanged and the paid lunch periods only applying to mandatory overtime only.

The deep concern shared by your negotiation committee on the exposure of insurance rate increases and the loss of some of our current work rules, in exchange for productivity gains, drives the point home we must achieve wage rate increases that more than compensate for these combined adjustments.

We agreed with the Company to forgo the weekend negotiation schedule in order for the parties to gather and analyze data on comparative retirement and health care benefit plans. Negotiations will resume next Monday and the parties have agreed to an extensive schedule in an attempt to move closer to a tentative agreement.

The next round of AMFA – ASA negotiations in Seattle; will take place at the Gold Coast Center, dates listed below. Please watch the Local 14 website for any updated information.

For additional negotiation information and other AMFA carrier updates, please call the AMFA National Hotline at (800)-520-AMFA (2632).