Union Update October 29, 2022

Dear Norse cabin crew:

This Union newsletter will discuss the following topics:

1)      Union week in Arendal

2)      Meet the CEO in FLL and JFK

3)      Wet lease flying

4)      Leaves of Absence

5)      Travel Benefits

6)      LGW flying

7)      Roster Improvement

8)      Voting period for Tentative Agreement

1.       Union week in Arendal

This week your Union leaders gathered with union leaders from OSL and LGW at Norse Atlantic headquarters in Arendal, Norway. We discussed several important subjects including the cuts to the winter schedule, possible ACMI flying, summer routes, travel benefits, and company culture. The common theme that everyone agreed to is internal communication is lacking here at Norse and there needs to be a system of accountability. When it comes to issues that affect us as crew members, we need mechanisms in place to ensure we are receiving accurate and timely information from the Company. We agreed that going forward, we would schedule regular meetings between the unions and management and we would provide feedback on the progress of communication.

Our union had the opportunity to talk with other unions about shared interests and going forward, we will work together with our union colleagues from LGW and OSL on improving our scheduling policies, staff travel policy, and crew hotels.

2.       Meet the CEO in FLL and JFK

Some of you had the opportunity to meet Bjorn Tore Larsen at FLL and JFK. The meetings provided a great opportunity for crew to tell Bjorn Tore himself that the crew aren’t happy with our rosters this winter and need more flexibility. We also told him that we weren’t happy with the staff travel policy. At the meeting in JFK he found out that employees were being charged for baggage. He didn’t agree with this and promised to change it. He also said he would work with the unions on offering leave of absence but he didn’t want to do it yet because of potential wet lease business coming soon.

3.       Wet lease flying

The Company is working on trying to secure one of three different contracts for wet lease flying. Securing one or two wet lease contracts could greatly enhance the amount of flying crew perform in the winter. Until we sign the contracts, we won’t know which bases will do the flying, but the goal is to spread the flying around as long as it is financially feasible for the Company.

4.       Leaves of Absence

The Company has agreed to allow voluntary leaves of absence. If you haven’t already put in a leave request and would like to request leave for November, please email [email protected] and [email protected]. If you would like to request leave from December through March, you can do so, but keep in mind that the company may need to call you back early from leave so they can meet their wet-lease obligation. In this case, you will be provided with 2-week notice to return from leave.

5.       Travel Benefits

We are still pressing the company on improving the Staff Travel Policy. So far, we have heard that the baggage fees are waived for employees making a staff travel booking. We are still asking that the company get rid of the “ID Travel Fee” where we only pay government taxes. We finally received confirmation from the Company that our “join date” for staff travel purposes will be our first day of training. Our hire date for pay and flight attendant seniority purposes still remains May 26, 2021, but our “company seniority” date which will be used for staff travel is our first day of training.

6.       LGW flying

We received confirmation from Bjorn Tore that the US crew will be flying routes to/from LGW on the Norse UK AOC alongside the LGW based crew. This is definitely great news for us because it expands the amount of flying available to us. We don’t know exactly how the US crew will be able to fly for both the Nowegian and UK AOCs but right now the Company seems to think they can make it work. If Norse is able to have US crew fly for both AOCs it will most likely require us to have a UK attestation and UK medical in addition to our EASA attestations and medicals. We will also be required to keep up to date with both manuals and notices.

7.       Roster Improvement

Even before the schedule cuts, we knew that the way our rosters are currently built is inefficient and unsatisfactory to the crew. Right now, one person in Arendal singlehandedly builds the pairings and our rosters by hand every month after sorting through a barrage of requests from crew members. This practice is time consuming and unsustainable. The long-term solution is to implement a bidding program supplemented with a pairing building program. The Union and the Company have seen demonstrations by several bidding companies and we will be soon be choosing a company to provide an automated bidding solution for Norse. The timeline from purchase to implementation will be long—up to a year. Among other things, the flight time limitations for EASA, the UK AOC, and the Norway AOC have to be entered into the new bidding system and the system will have to be programmed to seamlessly communicate to Norse’s crew management system (PDC). Because there will be a long period of time before a bidding solution is implemented we asked the Company if we could provide one or two crew members from the AFA Scheduling Committee to fly to Arendal, learn the current pairing and rostering systems, and help build the rosters for crew every month, until the automated bidding system is up and running. The Company said they would be okay with this and this is good news for us because soon we will have our colleagues, who fly just like us, helping to build rosters that are fair to the crew. We will select Scheduling Committee members (and all committee members for that matter) after our Contract is voted in and we start collecting Union dues.

8.       Voting period for Tentative Agreement

The voting period for our Tentative Agreement has been finalized. We will start voting for the Tentative Agreement on November 1st and voting will end on November 22nd. We will receive voting information in our mailboxes next week. If you didn’t receive any voting material, it is because you did not fill out a union membership application. You can fill out an AFA MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION HERE. And you can also fill out a DUES CHECK-OFF FORM HERE. If the TA is voted in, it will become a legally binding contract that will be in effect for 2 years. Union dues collection will start no earlier than the month after the TA becomes a Contract—most likely January of next year.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us: [email protected]

In Unity,

Valentin, Katarzyna, and Ted