TWU Local 579 Files Class Grievance After Company Fails to Honor QR CBA Deadlines
Sep 03, 2022
Your TWU Local 579 Grievance Team has received numerous inquiries regarding when the Company will implement their contractual obligations under Article 29 – Qualified Roles. Under Article 29, the Company is required to properly staff the Qualified Role position in order to attain adequate staffing levels, to eliminate the requirement of the top 12% of Qualified Role IFCs to sit Reserve Periods, and to reduce the minimum required number of monthly Pairings from 3 to 2 by mid-2022. By any reasonable person’s count, we are past the middle of 2022. As we near the end of the third quarter, JetBlue has not implemented these contractual requirements for the October Bid Period.
As early as mid-June, the TWU began requesting the Company’s timeline for meeting the Qualified Role requirements. At that time, the Company notified the Union that they needed to make changes to the program to meet the contractually obligated mid-2022 deadline. The TWU was willing to negotiate this with the Company along with some other much needed changes for our workgroup. As we have previously reported, on July 8, the Union sent over our counterproposal to negotiate these issues, which were time-sensitive to meet the mid-2022 deadline. In spite of numerous promises to respond, it has now been almost two months since the Company received our proposal, without a written response. When it became clear that we would not reach agreement in time for the Company to meet the mid-2022 deadline, our Union asked how the Company proposed to honor their obligations under the CBA. These requests have been completely ignored. This shows a lack of respect for us IFCs, our CBA, and the negotiating process.
Today, on behalf of every IFC, the TWU filed a class grievance against JetBlue for knowingly violating the QR requirements in Article 29. While we expect there will occasionally be mistakes made that violate the contract, this kind of blatant disregard for our hard-fought gains in the Contract will not be tolerated on any level. We will continue to keep you updated on the progress of a potential agreement and the status of the grievance filed today.