Date of Hire: What Could be Simpler or Fairer?
In April 2009, or almost three years ago, The PMDL Seniority Integration Committee (PMDL SIC) proposed integrating the PMDL and PMNW seniority lists by date of hire. Nothing could be simpler or fairer than that. But rather than accepting that proposal, or even meeting for face to face discussions, the PMNW SIC has chosen instead to delay the process, apparently hoping to forestall the May 1 fly together and potentially losing a date of hire integration for the PMNW flight attendants that they are supposed to be representing.
Too Little, Too Late
On Monday, January 9, 2012, the PMNW SIC will finally present their proposal for a combined seniority list. The committee has also announced a series of road shows, which combined with their lengthy process to arrive at a proposal does not bode well for a conciliatory, quick integration of the list.
Is Date of Hire Out the Door?
For all intents and purposes, it appears that the PMNW SIC is bound to hand our seniority integration decision over to an arbitrator, potentially losing for the Northwest flight attendants the date of hire integration that the Delta flight attendants have already recommended. After all, committee member Barb Schlosser, MSP, has experience in forcing previous seniority integration to an arbitration in which flight attendants lost years of seniority. And Committee Chair Dotty Malinsky was a strong proponent of stapling the Republic Airlines flight attendants at the bottom of the Northwest Orient flight attendants during that merger. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, has Dotty finally found another definition of “fair and equitable”?
A Dismal Track Record for PMNW SIC
Nothing can illustrate the sheer and utter incompetence and self-indulgence of the PMNW SIC more than their own complete lack of performance. The complete lack of accountability to the flight attendants who elected them, could jeopardize date of hire integration and throw all PMNW flight attendants under the bus. Let’s compare the track records of the PMDL SIC and the PMNW SIC:
Working for the Flight Attendants They Represent –PMDL SIC
Recommendation: Date of Hire
Time Period to Completion of Work: Less than Four Months
November 21, 2008 - PMDL flight attendants elect SIC members. Members go immediately to work, working five days per week, through the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays, and staying in the Delta dorm rooms in Atlanta.
February 11, 2009 – In approximately TEN WEEKS, PMDL SIC reaches unanimous decision on date of hire proposal with credit for flight attendant initial training. The proposal includes an equitable adjustment to integrate PMDL and PMNW flight attendants who are hired on the same date. In very simple terms, if a PMDL class and a PMNW class started training on the same date, the seniority would be integrated according to relative class size. For example if there are twice as many PMNW flight attendants hired on the same day as PMDL flight attendants, they would be slotted in at two PMNW flight attendants to one PMDL flight attendants. If the class sizes were reversed, the converse would also be true.
April 9, 2009 – All videos/information posted on the portal regarding proposal, methodology, etc. are posted on the portal. Delta also signs off on the proposal and two of the three interested parties are in agreement on the methodology. Starting from nothing, the PMDL SIC completes their recommendation, including methodology and posts information on historical precedent, statistics and reasons to support their proposal.
Working for Themselves – PMNW SIC
Recommendation: Who Knows?
Time Period to Completion of Work: Nine Months and Counting
April 15, 2011 – PMNW SIC elected, begin meeting April 18, 2011. As their first order of business, overly paranoid committee members refuse to participate in a group exercise on communication styles and effective teamwork. Ignorantly, they refer to this as some sort of “indoctrination” on their one and only conference call for flight attendants. Ironically, this exact exercise is used in organizations around the world, and was even used at a previous Northwest union as an exercise for the union leadership.
Waiting, Waiting, Waiting . . .
There’s not much else to report for the better part of the ensuing year, as the committee members shroud themselves in a cloak of secrecy and lack of transparency to the flight attendants who elected them. They meet for barely 2 days per week, despite being paid full time flight loss pay. For many of them, including Committee Chair Dotty Malinsky, this is undoubtedly reminiscent of the light work schedules and generous salaries they enjoyed in their former union positions.
PMNW committee members have treated themselves to “permanent” hotel rooms since last April. They keep their rooms (at company expense) even for the 4 days each week that they are not meeting. They also treat themselves to company expensed rental cars and other perks that far exceed the business expense reimbursements of the flight attendants they are supposed to be representing.
Employing every delay and stall tactic in the book – and coming up with a few of their own – committee members wait over two months before requesting an attorney, and then become petulantly aggressive in insisting on one particular attorney. Remember, they had ALREADY BEEN HANDED A DATE OF HIRE PROPOSAL FROM THE PMDL COMMITTEE, so there was no substantive point to requesting an attorney, unless they wanted to make an alternate proposal.
Dotty and her committee soon renege on a commitment to update flight attendants on progress via a weekly hotline; mainly as a result of a dearth of valid excuses for unnecessarily delaying a very simple, date of hire, proposal. They pretend to busy themselves with inconsequential administrative work and cite such non-relevant items as weather in other parts of the country as excuses to cut their 2 day work week down to one day, or failing to show up all together.
Last August, as a result of Dotty’s utter lack of leadership, committee members got into such a rancorous argument, that they all left Atlanta for nearly a month, continuing to collect their full time salaries to sit at home and do nothing. According to postings that Dotty has made on restricted forums and FaceBook group pages, the PMNW SIC then treated itself to a paid vacation for the entire month of December. The majority of the committee members could never touch even a week of December vacation as flight attendants, much less the entire month, yet they somehow saw no self-serving hypocrisy in their behavior.
Where We Are Now
January 9 2012
It’s been the better part of a year and even with the PMDL SIC proposal and all the statistical work behind completed long ago, the PMNW SIC is only now, finally, ready to release their proposal to the Delta flight attendants. They have also scheduled week long road shows to “explain” their methodology. Ironically, committee member Scott Braxton (averagejoe administrator and chief anti-flight attendant antagonist) has been crowing on hotel vans and in other locations that the proposal has been ready for months. Apparently transparency and accountability to the flight attendants that elected them were trumped by the committee’s desire to take yet another month long paid vacation.
What Now?
The events of next week will be very telling. Will the PMNW SIC members own up to their own incompetence and present the same no-brainer date of hire proposal that the PMDL SIC presented three years ago? Or will they continue to try to obfuscate their intransigence and make a proposal that is so unrealistic and so beyond their scope that it will throw the entire matter into the hands of an arbitrator, who can define “fair and equitable” integration according to his own terms? Will they continue to do all they can to perpetuate their own cushy positions and attempt to delay the May 1 fly together date and the benefits it will bring to ALL the Delta flight attendants? Only time will tell.
If you want a date of hire proposal and if you are sick of the continuing incompetence and corruption of many of these committee members, be sure to show up at the road shows around the system this week and ask the committee members to explain their unnecessary delay to you. Tell them that you want the date of hire proposal the PMDL SIC recommended three years ago and you are tired of their stall tactics. You can also email them at: PMNWSIC.IFS@delta.com
Sincerely,
Jose Arturo Ibarra
