Welcome to your 2016 Newsletters Welcome to the first in the series of the 2016 IMPACT Cabin Crew Committee Newsletters. In our Newsletters we will address the issues on the lines and continuing topical issues from a different perspective that the norm. Our aim is to give you simple, clear information on the goings on of your committee and our continued discussions with the company. Message from the Chair We aim to be as transparent as possible by giving you an insight into the daily runnings Dear Cabin Crew Colleague, of your Cabin Crew Committee. The Committee have held General Meetings over the last few weeks in Dublin, Cork and Shannon. Meeting the members in this way and listening to their concerns is always an important part of the work of the committee and we would like to thank all those who took time to come to the Many feel the need for a continued strong unionised workforce in Aer Lingus is long gone, meetings. It is clear to this committee But we have to fight for what little we have left that there is a lot of anger out there and that it arises from familiar territory. and in the meantime, hopefully ensure that Aer Lingus is still a good and fair place to work. Rosters, outsourcing, seasonality and agreement breaches have been I hope you enjoy this Newsletter and as always issues of great concern for far too long. if you need any assistance contacts can be found below and on the back page of this Continued on Page 2 Newsletter. We also hope this newsletter will help give you some guidance on the lines in your day to day operation on board our aircraft. It is hard at the moment to continue to fight for your working Conditions when you are under so much pressure from management and other factors. Chairperson Niall Mullaly -087-9950323 IMPACT Representative for Cabin Crew Michael Landers 087-6375788 mlanders@impact.ie
(Continued from Page 1) The big talking point on the lines is the issue of horrendous doubles and implications for the summer roster. When the only protection you have is the company's Green Book you have no protection from split days, six day stretches of work and insufficient time to recover. Our 5:3 plan is simple, efficient, fair and is difficult to argue against when all you have to protect you is the Green Book. Last year the company informed us that a 767 crewed by OMNI Air crew would trial a service on a transatlantic route. Assurances that it was a one off trial were given by management. Those assurances have proven to be empty. The 767 is planned to return in June. Aer Lingus have refused to discuss an agreement on the issue. It is apparent from the general meetings that crew will not stand for the outsourcing of Aer Lingus jobs. In 2012 Aer Lingus offered a deal on Seasonality for the payment of the 2009 increment. That deal was emphatically rejected by Cabin Crew. It is a source of great anger that the company have now attempted to introduce seasonality without agreement let alone payment of the increment. Further; that they are forcing CCM's and Seniors to apply for Seasonal promotions. Without agreement there is no telling to what extent the seasonal model will replace the permanent contract. The company have refused to engage in this issue beyond empty statements on "growing the business". It's hard to explain to people outside of IFS how much the department has changed for the worse in the last few years. The Dublin meeting expressed the underlying fury and frustration felt at the constantly changing work environment and Shannon and Cork echoed that theme. The Health and Wellbeing report commissioned by the Committee has indicated appallingly low levels of wellbeing; a direct result of company policy on agreements. Attempts to address issues on many breached agreements has been met with complete indifference from IFS management. That indifference, never acceptable, must now be fought. In answer to the many questions "what do we do about it?" it has become clear that the smash and grab culture that Aer Lingus now employ must be met with a strong answer that it will no longer be tolerated. The Branch is keeping all options under review including industrial action over the summer period if necessary. Last year just the threat of industrial action gained us extra time off after transatlantic flights. It is unfortunate that it is only the threat of industrial action brings improvements to our situation. Sincerely, Niall Mullally Chair, IMPACT Cabin Crew Committee.
Meal Break Credits What effect do new EASA FTLs have on us? - Max 1000 flight hours in a rolling year. - Max 900 flight hours in a calendar (Jan-Dec) Year. - Max 100 flight hours in 28 days. - Max Daily duty hours vary depending On when you check in and how many Sectors you have. Have a look at the CCI Below for exact details. - All hours can be viewed on AIMS ecrew Under Flight/Duty Time Statistics. - Flight Duty Period (FDP) or duty hours are from check-in until chocks on. - Flight hours are chock to chock or the time of off stand to the time of on Stand. - As the company has not enhanced our inflight rest (other than on aircraft fitted with LDMCRs), Duty Time Extensions As per the below CCI do not apply. Earlier this year your IMPACT committee met with the IAA over a number of issues and sought clarification from the IAA on Aer Lingus' claim that the IAA have forced Them to remove Meal Credits. What the IAA stated to Aer Lingus was that crew must have take their meal break and that it is a safety issue not a financial one. There was no mention of a need to remove meal credits. Since then the company have taken no action to restore meal credits or ensure our meal/nutrition breaks. A recent CCLOB noted 2 things: 1) The guideline for taking meal breaks is in our Service Flow Manual. This is not the case, in fact there is no mention of breaks at all in our Service Flow Manual. 2) Breaks on Trans-Atlantic should be a max of 30 mins. Very difficult considering recommended cooking time for crew meals is between 20-30 minutes. So what we do as crew? The most important thing for us to do as crew is to ensure we get our breaks. New EASA regulations from Feburary 2016 recommend breaks work in time with actual meal times, e.g. Breakfast at breakfast time, Lunch at lunch time, etc. We are entitled to a meal break of 30 minutes on duties over 6 hours.
Cleaning Update Many of you have asked if your Union is doing anything about Cleaning on turnarounds. I would like to take the time to remind you that we still have not been asked to clean on the ground. I would remind you that we do not clean on the ground. If you would like clarification on this please contact any member of IFS Management. We do still collect rubbish inflight with our standard walkthrough for rubbish. But we do not clean on the ground under any circumstances. Unfortunately the company has decided that our passengers will have to sit in the rubbish from previous flights. As security professionals we have to still ensure we complete our security checks which are as per our Security Manager: A visual inspection is adequate if the seat pocket is empty. As there are materials such as magazines, safety card, sick bag or indeed waste, a physical examination is required to ensure it does not contain prohibited articles. The easiest way to do this is to remove materials, check them and then check what should be an empty seat pocket. Having removed the rubbish from seat pocket to do security check we put the rubbish back where we found it. Positioning What are the Rules? Positioning (PY-ing) duties are becoming more and more common on our rosters. The reason is simply Operational efficiency which allows the company to use us in the most financially beneficial way. It is becoming something we can't get away from, so what are the rules in terms of positioning duties? - Your hours positioning before a duty still count towards the total duty time. Your duty time is your time of checking in to the time you clear customs at home base. Max duty times are now a bit all sporadic but a good rule of thumb is 12 hours for doubles, 13 hours for a single. - Your hours positioning after a duty do not count towards total duty time. However, if your duty exceeds 12 hours, your rest before your next duty must be the same as the duty over 12 hours or greater. This goes for all duties in which 12 hours has been exceeded. Note: The max rostered duty time is 12 hours. Can I Position before an Atlantic Duty? The current Shannon 757 Agreement ensures all crew operating ex DUB overnight in DUB before crossing the Atlantic. Unfortunately as there is no Dublin 757 Agreement this is not the case and DUB 757 crew can PY before crossing the Atlantic without an overnight.
Outsourcing Our jobs are being outsourced on the following routes: DUB-LYS, DUB-PGF,DUB-BIO, DUB-NCE, DUB-SCQ, SNN-JFK. Over a period of 98 days flights from Dublin to Perpignan, Nice and Santiago de Compostela are being outsourced to BA Cityflyer on Saturdays. Over a period of 14 days our flight from Dublin to Lyon will be outsourced to BA Cityflyer on Saturdays. Over a period of 77 days our flights from Dublin to Santiago de Compostela will be outsourced to BA Cityflyer on Saturdays. Over a period of 84 days (totaling 168 flights) our Shannon to Boston service will be outsourced to Omni Air International. These outsourcing are being advertised as Expansions of capacity by Aer Lingus. the reality is these aircraft do not belong to Aer Lingus, the crew are not Aer Lingus crew, nothing about the flight service is Aer Lingus. New Committee Sub-Groups At our monthly meeting, the committee voted to create sub-groups to deal with specific issues related to crew. Below is the list of sub-groups and the members of each. If you would like to get involved please get in touch with us. Equality Group: Sarah O'Leary, Darryl Sheridan, Alan Gorman Seasonal Permanent Group: Members Required Cabin Air Quality: Niall Mullaly, Alan O'Neill, Madeline Meyer Hotel Group: Alan Gorman, Mary Mulholland, 757 Group: Annette Heffernan Madeline Meyer, Mary Mulholland, Eoin Coates, Sarah O'Leary Roster Monitoring: Annette Heffernan, Shirley Fitzsimons, IWSL Group: Eoin Coates, Alan O'Neill Mary Mulholland, Madeline Meyer, Shirley Fitzsimons Health and Safety: Darryl Sheridan, Gillian White, Communications Group: Magdalena Pietras Sarah O'Leary, Eoin Coates
Aer Lingus Inaccuracies Contact Details: The Company have printed a version of the new EASA regulations which do not reflect accurately how our agreements on mealbreaks are unaffected. General Queries: The actual EASA regulation is as followsoro.ftl.240 Nutrition Meal Opportunity (a) The operations manual should specify the minimum duration of the meal opportunity, when a meal opportunity is provided, in particular when the FDP encompasses the regular meal window (e.g. if the FDP starts at 11:00 hours And ends at 22:00 hours meal opportunities for two meals should be given). (b) It should define the time frames in which a regular meal should be consumed in order not to alter the human needs for nutrition without affecting the crew members body rhythms. The Aer Lingus version is therefore peppered with inaccuracies: 7.11.1 of the PAC "When sufficient time is available nutrition breaks for crew members may be allocated" is at variance with the requirement for a meal opportunity when the FDP exceeds 6 hours. It says nothing about "when available", it is absolute. "On all aircraft, the allocated time period should be at a minimum 10 minutes and at a maximum 30 minutes" is pure invention. While the company have a requirement to set a minimum time, our agreement on shorthaul is for a meal break of 30 minutes. Recital 7, is one of the foundation documents of EASA regulations and requires that local laws and agreements be respected and maintained where they are more advantageous than the legal minima. In short your right to 30 minutes on any shorthaul duty over 6 hours is unaffected by the introduction of EASA regulations. Furthermore the right to your meal breaks if 60 minutes westbound and 45 minutes eastbound on TA flights is similarly unaffected. cabincrew@impact.ie Chairperson: Niall Mullaly 087-9950323 Vice-Chairperson: Gillian White 087-9333783 Secretary: Sarah O'Leary 087-2767743 Treasurer: Annette Heffernan 087-9316540 Other Members: Alan Gorman 085-8278107 Alan O'Neill 086-8221222 Darryl Sheridan 086-8423080 Madeline Meyer 087-2247626 Magdalena Pietras 086-1840327 Mary Mulholland 086-8137086 Eoin Coates 087-7597962