An Informative Letter from AMFA! Victory Against Alaska Airlines

Oct 25 in Members News

The unique american member of AEI, AMFA and its former national president Louie Key sent a letter to AEI about latest developments.

AMFA won the legal battle against Alaska Airlines after merging with Virgin America.

Alaska asked for a 15% reduction at workforce and AMFA stood against this decision. Luckily the court decided that AMFA was right…..

AEI congratulate Mr. Louie Key and each AMFA member who provided solidarity with their union.

Here is some crucial paragraphs from letter;

…..Most importantly the Transition Agreement also provided for Job Security language that protected both the AMFA Technicians and Virgin America Technicians in the “blended stations” from furlough of any positions during the duration of the contract extension, which runs until October 2023!

This job security language proved to be extremely valuable for the AMFA members. (The former Virgin America employees are now AMFA members since the approval of the Merger Agreement).

In March 2020, in response to Covid 19, the United States government passed legislation that provided financial support to the airline industry known as the CARES Act. A provision of the Act required that airlines could not involuntarily furlough employees through September 30, 2020. In the summer of 2020 Alaska Airlines notified us there would be an approximate 15% reduction of AMFA employees. We reminded them of the no-furlough language in the Transition Agreement and a grievance was filed and arbitration scheduled to resolve the dispute.

In September, the arbitrator ruled in the union’s favour. Furthermore, he not only ruled there could not be furloughs at the blended stations, but also that employees at non-protected stations, if furloughed, could bump into a protected station and then they too would now be protected and their job secure. It was a major victory for the union members!…

• to report the full letter please click HERE
• to reach the informative link of AMFA for its members, please click HERE
• to reach AMFA website, visit www.amfanational.org