Unity Commitment

Date: November 2, 2015
Source: AFA Article

Dear Flight Attendants:

We hear you. It is well past time for a joint contract at United Airlines. You deserve to participate in the profits you help create and you deserve the security of a merged operation that offers a consistency of schedule and job security. We know you take pride in your work and we believe you deserve to be happy at work. We also understand that starts with leadership working in unity, which is what we commit to you.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is our union and our membership provides us with the legal right to collective bargaining and having a voice at work on all of the issues that matter to us as Flight Attendants. We respect every voice, honor discussion and debate and use our democracy to determine how we move forward together as members of AFA-CWA.

Our MEC structure is central to our AFA-CWA Constitution; it is the means by which we exercise our collective voice to protect our rights and our interests at our specific airlines. In a merger this requires leaders and members of all three former airlines to work together as one. We commit to bringing our Flight Attendant groups together in order to move forward to accomplish our collective goals.

As long as we all participate in the following steps for unity, we also collectively request the International President hold in abeyance the process to merge the MECs until we have a joint contract.

We agree to:

• Merge communications to Flight Attendants so we are all speaking with one voice and Flight Attendants all have equal access to information from our union.
• There will be no form of separate negotiations and all negotiations will go through the AFA Director of Collective Bargaining and require approval of the Joint MECs, along with all of the Constitutional procedures for bargaining.
• Our three MECs, comprised of all of the directly-elected Flight Attendants of the new United Airlines, will meet jointly as necessary to make decisions which impact all Flight Attendants company-wide. Further, we will schedule MEC meetings together and take advantage of every opportunity to work as one group.
• All Local Council and MEC officers agree to adhere to a spirit of unity in all communications and follow AFA mutual respect, social media and other policies that support a unified voice and our efforts to reach a joint collective bargaining agreement that members can ratify. As is current union practice, internal concerns will be brought through established union channels and resolved expeditiously by the Joint Master Executive Council.
• We will take concrete steps to coordinate MEC committee work and other functions which require common responses to management or where Flight Attendants share common concerns. In other words, we will take action as one union.

United Airlines must complete the operational merger in order to compete and survive in the newly consolidated U.S. airline industry. While none of us asked for this merger, it has happened and now we must make it work for us. With new leadership at United, the time has never been better or more important for us to join together and claim the best possible future.

After hearing from our Joint Negotiating Committee this past Thursday, there is no doubt our position at the table is a blending of our three contracts and the different Flight Attendant interests in negotiations. The JNC presented to us a single position in negotiations and now we must all stand together to achieve the best agreement we can.

We encourage you to join us as we move forward with one voice - 24,000 United.

In Solidarity,

Cari Kershaw President Council 60	Joey Guider President Council 62	Sheryl Kee CAL MEC Vice President
Jayson Jarrell President Council 63	Denny Wheeling President Council 64	Randy Hatfield CAL MEC Secretary-Treasurer
Richard Dagnall President Council 5	Paul Antuna President Council 8	Chris Black President Council 11
Anthony King President Council 7	Ken Kyle President Council 9	Dante Harris President Council 12
Kevin Batey President Council 14	Michael Blake President Council 20	Todd Failla President Council 21
Bill Carico President Council 25	Nara Nakulan President Council 26	Andrew Fahy President Council 27
Rick Gonzalez President Council 38	Franko Ocasio President Council 42
Ken Diaz UAL MEC President	Andreas Curlee UAL MEC Vice President	Jeff Heisey UAL MEC Secretary-Treasurer
Kathleen Domondon President Council 65 CMI MEC President	Jose Torres Secretary Council 65 CMI MEC Secretary-Treasurer

Printed from the official United Master Executive Council website at www.unitedafa.org.