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Grievance :
TDY Arbitration Decision
On October 18, 2004, Arbitrator Barry Winograd handed the
Association a big victory. After the World Trade Center terrorism and subsequent furloughs, Eagle found itself short staffed in San
Juan and needed to cover numerous trips without of domicile crews. Section 8.S. of the collective
bargaining agreement mandates that when temporary shortages exist, “the Company will create TDY
bid lines” to fill the vacancies. Instead of following this language in the contract, the Company instead
deadheaded flight attendants from Dallas and ultimately also from Miami into San Juan to work one
trip, then deadheaded them home at the end of the trip. The same flight attendant could end up doing this up to four times a month.
When we grieved this, the Company responded with two arguments:
- Creating TDY lines was only one of several options available;
- Because of the American Eagle/Executive partition, Eagle could not domicile Eagle certificated
flight attendants in San Juan on a temporary basis. (This argument did not apply to the Miami/Executive flight attendants.)
Additionally, the company had recently won an arbitration with ALPA over the exact same issue with
similar contract language.
During the arbitration hearing, Grievance Chair Sutor provided an example of when the company had
previously set up temporary duty in a domicile with a different flight certificate. In 1994, following the
crash in Roselawn, Indiana and grounding of the ATRs in cold weather climates, the company shifted
all the ATR flying to Miami and San Juan. At the same time, Eagle took cold weather ATR flight attendants from domiciles such as Chicago and based them temporarily in Miami and San Juan to
perform the flying. Thus, we established that it is possible to work around the partition.
Arbitrator Winograd sustained our grievance. In his award, he gave us some very good language.
- He found that the language in the AFA agreement provided stronger protection than the
language in the ALPA agreement. AFA’s language was mandatory. Whenever a flight attendant shortage exists, TDY must be created. ALPA’s language depended on the company first
affirmatively declaring vacancies for pilots.
- The fact that a partition existed between American Eagle and Executive was irrelevant. The
parties negotiated the current collective bargaining agreement with full knowledge that the partition existed. Therefore, it was incumbent upon American Eagle to find a way to comply
with the contract in recognition of that partition.
What is the effect of Wingrad’s decision and award?
- Whenever two or more trips will operate and must be staffed with a flight attendant from
another domicile, the company is required to plot the trips in a TDY line – either full month or partial month.
- The American Eagle/Executive partition is not a bar from compliance with or an excuse to
violate the contract. The company MUST find a way to operate in compliance with the contract while accommodating the partition.
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