ART, RBP – SPLOAs – PLOAs and Globe

I felt that it was time to give you an update on the issues we have been working on in recent weeks.  It has been a busy time, but we will continue to work hard to stay abreast of new developments and to act quickly.  As always, our short and long term goal is to improve the working lives of our members.
ART 2019
The current ART program has caused members to write to us en masse about the content of the last day and they question whether there is an actual need to attach it to ART 2019. The problem that we are seeing is that our members are not receiving credits towards their MML.  This is resulting in a normal month of flying with the extra burden of all of the training on top of that.
We have two bases that travel for training, YYC and YYZ. YYC is paid for the travel day, and YYZ is not. We have filed a policy grievance on this as we have seen our members paid for travel to do ART in the past.  It was along the same route of Montreal to Toronto. We hope the Company will start to pay our Toronto members for the additional day of travel they must endure. The policy grievance (CHQ-19-12 Travel Pay – Between YYZ and YUL bases) is attached HERE.
I have also had many members reach out about the discount at the layover location for ART in YUL. Please note it has been confirmed that all members, training or otherwise, are entitled to the crew discount.  In order to get the discount, you will need to show crew ID.
RBP – SPLOAs – PLOAs
Many of you have been contacting the locals, Component Officers and committees to see what is going on with the various leave and reduced flying options.
We had a meeting with the Company to discuss this and we were advised that the Company will issue these awards when the blocks come out. At this meeting the Union stated that this was not transparent and did not give our members the whole picture prior to bidding. To complicate matters more, all three options had different bidding windows. How can one bid a leave and mini block and then be required to bid for a full month, mini block or a month off?
It was explained to us by the company that the primary reason things were designed this way was because they wanted to award as many RBPs and leaves as possible while protecting their language positions.  It was a sure way to verify that there was no language flying that was not covered.  Of course, this resulted in an outcome that saw many of our members denied the leaves due to “language”.
Moving forward, we will certainly work to ensure that options are maximized for all members, which includes Rouge.  One of our governing principles will be that we want leaves to be offered to all members.  We would also like them to be clearly communicated with as much notice as possible.
Globe Issues – Viewing Open Time 
The company has found a temporary fix to the issue our members were facing with the system timing out.  This was unfortunately caused by the substantial volume of open pairings in the system. As a temporary fix, you will now only see pairings you are legal for. If you are legal to pre-select a pairing you will see it available.  If you see no open time, that means there are no legal pairings for you.
These have been trying times for all our members, both Mainline and Rouge.  We have been hearing countless stories of the issues you are all facing with the above, I want to assure you we are working on issues as they come forward. Unfortunately, many issues take time to address, but we have an excellent team, on the same page, working for you.
Communication is key so please do not hesitate to reach out anytime.  Your union is only as strong as the members it represents, and we are getting stronger by the day!
In solidarity,
Wesley Lesosky
President, Air Canada Component of CUPE