Airlift Northwest Bargaining Update: January 14 & 15

In an effort to make progress the union Bargaining Team and UW/HMC/ALNW management worked hard on non-economic issues.

1. Creating an ALNW Joint Labor/Management Safety Committee that has the power to implement change in a timely manner.
2. Requiring management provide staffing data collection to the union on a monthly basis. This data will includes flight volumes, missed flights, response times, QA and QI, workplace injuries and other information related to our work.
3. A  fair and transparent process for layoff and/or restructure. It is important for management to respect our layoff and rehire rights by seniority in the organization.

We also discussed the Wenatchee base closure and were able to finalize the details regarding layoff and rehire rights (see Wenatchee base closure bulletin for more information).

Management asked the union Bargaining Team to consider “pausing” bargaining in order to give time for the leadership of ALNW to orient to their new positions and review the financial status of the organization.

The union Bargaining Team is considering this possibility, assuming that there would be (a) a clear timeline to restart bargaining and (b) a commitment from management to make no unilateral decisions regarding working conditions in the interim. We are waiting for both the January 30 ALNW all staff meeting and the February 11 union Membership Meeting before making any decisions.