United Airlines Negotiations

Movement on outstanding issues; Overtime; Mediator

Rich Delaney, January 25, 2010 — Negotiations continued between District 141 and United Airlines this past week.

Both sides in United negotiations are interested in reaching agreement on some of the outstanding issues. District 141 focused on the details of what improved contract language needs to say, before finalizing our agreements on issues about which we had reached a general understanding during previous discussions.

There is now agreement on the new language. As mentioned other updates, that new language will be reviewed a final time before agreement on a complete contract revision. Only then will the complete agreement be brought to the membership for ratification.

Overtime

District 141 will now begin addressing some remaining proposals in the same detailed way. The first topic will be Overtime. Members’ proposals seeking to limit or redefine Mandatory Overtime will be discussed, for example. Contract language for overtime balance accrual and eligibility will be reviewed for possible improvement.

The company has indicated they intend to propose changes to the overtime bypass language. The changes both sides are looking for are not likely to be agreed upon without extensive discussion, research, and verification of impact. We do not expect to finish these discussions within days. Instead, District 141 intends to spend all the time necessary to completely analyze the different aspects of overtime before reaching any tentative agreement on it.

Federal Mediator

Mediator Brown will join us in United Airlines negotiations for the first time since before the Holidays. We plan on spending some time at the beginning of the week bringing her up to date on what has been accomplished since then. She will then participate in United negotiations concerning overtime.

As has been mentioned before, the agreed upon participation of Mediator Brown will remain as it has been since we applied for mediation in August. Ms. Brown has been joining the talks one week per month in order to keep up to date on our progress in United Airlines negotiations.

At this point neither the Union nor the company see a need to request her to attend on an ongoing basis, since we believe we can continue to reach agreement between ourselves.  At the point  we cannot reach voluntary agreement on issues we will request Mediator Brown take a more active role in United negotiations.