Seniority Matters

The IAM's Flight Attendant contracts contain important seniority protections. They require that seniority integration be "fair and equitable."

The IAM's long-held position is that seniority integration should be by date of entry into the Flight Attendant classification. The IAM's position is fair and equitable, and has been upheld through numerous previous mergers.

It is also the IAM's policy that the combined membership on the merged carrier will vote to approve a negotiated transition agreement containing seniority integration provisions before integration occurs.

The carrier and Seniority Integration Committees for each group of employees will produce a merged seniority list based on date of entry. All Flight Attendants will have an opportunity to review the merged seniority list and to protest if they believe the seniority list is not consistent with the IAM's integration policy, or if they believe that their placement on the list is erroneous.

Seniority protests will be heard by the Seniority Integration Committees and the carrier. If a protest is not resolved to the satisfaction of the Flight Attendant(s), an independent arbitrator will decide the issue in accordance with the fair and equitable standard.

In spite of having its own seniority integration policy, the AFA-CWA is struggling to implement it. It has been five years since the 2005 merger of US Airways and America West, and both pre-merger Flight Attendant groups were represented by the AFA-CWA. However, the AFA-CWA is still unable to resolve Flight Attendant seniority integration, and the carrier continues using two separate Flight Attendant seniority lists and two separate pre-merger contracts.

The IAM resolved seniority integration and negotiated transition agreements with raises and pensions for multiple classifications at US Airways years ago.