AFA Issues in the Senate

Our long road to a new FAA Reauthorization bill is one hurdle closer to reality.  Last week the Senate Commerce Committee completed work on its version of the bill and sent it on to the full Senate for consideration.  Included in the bill were a number of provisions important to AFA-CWA and that would improve our workplaces and lives.  We expect the full Senate to consider the bill sometime in late June or early July. 

At this point, before going into everything that was in the bill I'm going to take a step back and review the process this bill must take before becoming law.  I hope this doesn't bore anyone, but I thought that a review of the process might be helpful for everyone to realize how much work still remains before us.  You may want to print this out and take it with you to read.

So, with that....

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF AN FAA REAUTHORIZATION BILL

Every three to four years, Congress must pass an FAA Reauthorization bill.  This is the bill that "reauthorize's" the programs of the FAA, authorizes funding mechanisms for the FAA as a whole and allows for Congress to provide direction and outline priorities to the FAA.  This is always the most important legislation for AFA to address our safety and health issues.

The bill must go through the normal legislative process before going to the President for his signature and becoming law.  The bill must be considered and approved by the Aviation Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee - then considered, possibly changed and approved by the full Senate Commerce Committee  - and then considered, possibly changed and approved by the full Senate.  The bill must go through a similar process in the House.  It must be introduced, then taken up by the Aviation Subcommittee of the House Transportation Committee, then by the full Transportation Committee and finally by the full House of Representatives.

It's at this point that both the House and Senate bill must be reconciled.  Remember that for a bill to go to the President for consideration and to become law, it must pass both the House and Senate with the exact same language.  The two chambers - the House and Senate - appoint individual members to serve on a "conference committee" to work out the differences between the two bills.  Here is where most of the work takes place in formulating what the final bill will look like.

Once the conference committee reaches agreement on the final bill, it is approved by the full House and Senate and sent to the President for his signature or veto.

Where we are now, is that the Senate has begun work on their bill.  They have bypassed the consideration of the bill by the Aviation Subcommittee and took the bill straight to the full Commerce Committee.  They debated and amended the bill before sending it to the Senate for consideration, where we believe they will vote on it in late June or early July.

On the House side, things are surprisingly moving a bit slower.  We expect a version of the bill to be introduced either late this week or immediately after the House and Senate return from their week long Memorial Day recess.  Once they have introduced the bill, action in the Aviation subcommittee will take place soon after with a quick vote in the Transportation Committee and then the full House.

We expect that if everything goes according to plan, both the House and Senate will have passed their bills before the month long August recess and the conference committee will have begun its work.  The current law governing the FAA Reauthorization expires at the end of September, so they are under a time crunch to finish all the work and get it sent off the President before then.

BILL HAS BECOME CONTROVERSIAL IN SENATE

The overall bill has become controversial in the U.S. Senate over an important issue.  Currently, the United States has one of the oldest and most outdated air traffic control systems in the world when it comes to technology and equipment.  The goal is to over the next several years upgrade the entire system.  No one doubts for a second that this needs to get done.  The question is over how to pay for this upgrade.

Currently, the commercial carriers (your employers) pay over 95% of the cost for the system.  In order to raise the funds and make the system more fair, a bipartisan solution was reached by the leaders of the Aviation Subcommittee - Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Lott ( R-MS).  Their solution is to charge a one way user fee of $25 for every user of the air traffic control system.  This means that those flying private aircraft, and those using it the most - big Wall Street types on their private jets - would pay their fair share for using the system and to pay for it to be upgraded.  Basically, anyone using the system would pay for its usage in the same manner. 

This proposal has met with incredibly strong opposition from the General Aviation community, who have enjoyed using the system and don't want to see any fees added for them.  In an example of effective grassroots mobilization they flooded the Senate with phone calls opposing this approach.  A bipartisan amendment was offered in the Commerce Committee to strip this out of the bill from Senators Nelson (D-FL) and Sununu (R-FL).  The sponsors of the bill made it clear that if this amendment passed, the bill would be dead as they would have to go back to the drawing board.  In an example of where the union and management can agree and work together on an issue, we opposed the amendment.  Several AFA members stood in the hallway outside the Committee room to lobby Senators to oppose the amendment and to support other AFA issues.  In the end, the amendment failed on a very close vote of 11-12.

There will no doubt be an effort when the bill reaches the Senate floor to once again remove this provision from the bill.

AFA ISSUES IN THE SENATE BILL

AFA was successful in including a number of our priorities in the bill that was passed out of Committee.  I've outlined them below.

HIMS or "Return to the Cabin" Program for flight attendants - Currently, pilots can take advatage of a program - HIMS - that allows them to go through a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program if testing positive for drug or alcohol use.  Pilots have been able to base this program on their certification.  We have used our certification as a reason why flight attendants as well should have access to a similar program.  This language in the legislation would require the FAA to establish such a program for flight attendants.

English Language Proficiency - The bill contains language that require that all flight attendants certified by the FAA would have to pass an English language proficiency standard.  English is the official language of International aviation and all pilots, dispatchers, air traffic controllers and even TSA screeners must be English language proficient.  We believe that this standard helps improve aviation safety as well as making it much more difficult to outsource flight attendant jobs as aviation becomes more globalize and our jobs more at risk.

Fatigue Study - Language is the bill mandating that the FAA carry out the more detailed, more comprehensive flight attendant fatigue study as called for in the first study.  (It's important to note that we still need to obtain funding for this study to take place)

OSHA - We were able to, almost at the last minute, able to get language into the bill requiring forward movement on the adoption of OSHA standards for flight attendants.  While the language is not the ideal language it forces the FAA to move forward on adopting OSHA standards for flight attendants.  In the end, the Republicans on the Committee caved and excepted language and the carriers had to accept it.  Thanks to all of you for making this a reality with your calls and mobilization.  It definitely helped score a major victory for us.

Merger Protections for Airline Workers - We were able to score a major victory during the Committee vote on a provision that no one expect to have included.  Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri offered an amendment that would address several priorities of AFA's that would help airline workers in a merger situation.  First, it would require that when merging two contracts into one after a merger, those negotiations would fall under a section of the Railway Labor Act which would give us the right to strike.  It also brings back provisions that existed prior to deregulation that would require the airlines to provide a number of protections such as moving and relocation expenses, disruption expenses if domiciles are closed and most importantly it mandates that if two carriers are merging that the groups negotiate a "fair and equitable" way to merge the two seniority lists.  This would help prevent what happened to the former TWA flight attendants when they were stapled to the bottom of the American Seniority list when TWA was bought by American.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

For now, we can "cease fire".  At this point, we are waiting for the House bill to be introduce and see if we need to pursue an amendment strategy to have any of our issues addressed.  If so, we will need you to once again be engaged and mobilized in contacting Congress.  We may also have a fight on the Senate floor to prevent our merger protection provisions from being ripped out of the bill.

So, stay tuned, educated and engaged.