by John Hewitt, Negotiating Team Member
The Table Committee met with the Mediators and Company December 14 – 17. Members of the Table Committee are J.R. Ruiz (LAX), Vinnie Argentina (NY), Bob Owens (NY), Larry Pike (AFW), John Carlisle (TUL) and John Hewitt (TUL).
Being this was my first exposure to the negotiating table, I can tell you my vision of negotiations was a little different than real life. We are not only dealing with the Company, we are also, dealing with the Mediator. Since we are in “mediated negotiations” under the Railway Labor Act, we don’t necessarily get to discuss articles of the contract in the order that we choose. Instead, the mediator has the authority to set the agenda and order in which both sides discuss open issues.
The Tentative Agreement was voted down. That means the Whole TA was voted down and all articles need to be TA’d again. So our first task was to TA the articles that could be agreed to without any revision. After that we took care of articles that needed minor changes in order to be agreed to.
The session on Friday, December 17, around Noon, as planned.
We have a dialogue started with the company, which is an important first step since the rejection of the Tentative Agreement. As much as we wanted to put monetary articles on the table, the Mediator felt a different direction was better. He told us that the normal approach in RLA mediation is to resolve the non compensation issues before taking on the core economic issues and that is how he wants to handle matters. We are hopeful about discussing money articles in the near future.
Our next session has been scheduled for the week of January 10, where we will be leading off with Article 12.