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Negotiations this week were conducted at the Holiday Inn Select in Bloomington Minnesota. Work continued on Article 5 and Article 13. The Company has tabled Article 16 - Grievance Procedure. Article 5 – In Article 5 we have reached agreement on maintaining the ten separate classifications that are in the current contract as a letter of agreement. We have also reached agreement that an individual who accepts a position in management, or another position with the company outside of this contract, will forfeit their AMFA seniority after being in that position after a 180-day transition period. A seniority list protest procedure is very close to being finalized. The seniority list will be electronically published on an employee accessed Company website every February 1 and August 1. If you find an error in that list, you will have 10 days after the list is published to file a protest with your AMFA Airline Representative. Some of the remaining open items include the length of a new employees probationary period, how long an employee can be absent without leave before he is considered to have voluntarily resigned, and how long you retain your seniority if you have been laid off (AMFA’s proposal is indefinitely, while the Company wants to limit seniority retention to three years). Article 13 – Article 13 is also progressing with both sides having agreed on several issues. It was decided that we needed to have a formal definition for the terms used in this article such as “furlough”, “displaced” and “lay off”. We thought that both sides already understood what these terms meant but during our discussions it became apparent that misunderstandings were occurring. These definitions should help eliminate any confusion while reading the provisions of Article 13. We have reached agreement on provisions for the Company to offer voluntary layoffs in lieu of involuntary layoffs. Some of the open issues include AMFA proposals that provide for an employee to retain their recall rights indefinitely after layoff and the retention of all accrued sick time while on layoff. AMFA submitted a negotiation schedule through April 2004 that proposes to conduct negotiating sessions in MEM, CVG, CWA, DTW and MSP. The Company has not responded at this time. Negotiations are currently scheduled for October 28–30 in MSP. Ken Wagers
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