The bottom line is that discrimination on the basis of seniority is not inherently illegal, but you have not provided enough information for us to say if there is any illegal discrimination in what has happened to you or not. It's perfectly fine if you're not comfortable putting more information up in public - it's your right to keep that private. But in that case you will need to speak with a local attorney who can assess the information you're not comfortable putting here.
let me try and explain this was posted by a union representative
the company forced the union to make a decision that they knew would piss off one or the other group of FA’s. Classic union busting technique. If you still have questions on why or how the decisions were made, contact your base president or email the national officers. I’m hoping that nationals sends out a hotline also on the whys and how’s (with relevant contract sections that were discussed and used) so it reaches the masses but until then, I think Scott did a great job on explaining.
Good day,
Today, the company gave the manpower plan for May. We will have a 78.5 % reduction in the need for working flight attendants. This equates to 1,297 less FAs needed for the operation in Charlotte from last year. 786 flight attendants decided to take a leave or retire. As you can see, we are still way over staffed. The company had several options to address this and we rejected their attempts to violate the contract and ultimately got pushed into a corner on how we wanted to handle this. The decision was made to allow our most senior flight attendants to hold a no-bid line of zero hours and be pay protected to 70 hours as the contract allows. We wanted this to be done through a bidding process where you would bid to hold this option, - if your seniority could hold it, you would be awarded it. This would have satisfied the argument that seniority was not upheld. The company procrastinated on providing us with the staffing needs and said, they don’t have time for the possibility of a bidding window on this, quite simply, time ran out. The other ideas to spread the flying out evenly were not feasible because the computer would not process a PBS run and reserve bidding would also not be possible. The computer and bidding system would shut down and the reprogramming would require a significant amount of time and testing, this was tried, and the system failed each time. The decision was made to award the lines of flying to the lower half of the seniority roster and give the upper half a zero line with a 70-hour guarantee.
While some have speculated this is a violation of seniority, we believed this was consistent with the contract and protecting seniority. Think of it this way, if you were scheduled to work an AB330 aircraft with 8 flight attendants. When you get to the aircraft, it has been downsized to an AB321. The more senior flight attendants have the option to get off and be pay protected. They can “double dip” and pick up another trip. This is how our contract protects the most senior flight attendants. Downsized AC, the most senior get to go home with pay. Now we are having a downsized airline, so the most senior flight attendants are getting to go home with pay protection and the ability to “double dip”. This is protecting seniority. Some are posting other options that were explored and ruled out because of the computer limitations and violations of several parts of the contract. There was no easy answer and the company procrastination forced us into making this decision. We expressed our outrage on yet another company failure being pushed on the union to take the fall. Make no mistake, we explored every option and the company pushed us into making it look like the union did this. This is the company doing what they have done from the start of this crisis, reacting instead of being proactive. The lack of supplies and procedures to protect us, the delay in instituting a notification task force, the continuation of discipline points without acknowledging a global pandemic, and now a failure to have a staffing plan or any as-semblance of a trip package. All of these things were requested by the union way before this situation got out of control. I wouldn’t be surprised if the masks they give us cause a rash. They have let us down again.