NAATS Letters to members Volume 5b

This is going to be a long one so here goes!

EEOC complaint -- We added over 800 names to the complaint this past week and we are tentatively planning a press conference on March 31st at 1:00 pm when we pull the complaint out of the EEOC and put it in US District court. We have pushed it back to March 31st to make sure all of the 800 names were covered in the 30 day administrative process. This will probably give us an opportunity to put some other things in motion and kill two birds with one stone.

Wally Pike has been working very hard and will have some bill numbers for you to ask your elected representatives for their support. Once all of the information is final, he will put together a draft letter to make it easier for you all with the pertinent information and it will be posted on the web site for you to use. This should happen by the end of next week. This does include the retirement issues.

RIF Negotiations -- Scott will update you, but basically while the agency is smiling and offering up priority placement for the entire FAA, they are limiting the time you will be able to use the program. Nothing is final yet so this can change, but at this point it�s not looking good. The story on EMP1.18 is the agency is stating that non-federal employees cannot supervise federal employees, so according to the agency the issue is dead. What I don�t understand if this is the case, why do they have the policy in place and what does Section 6 paragraph (b) mean..."External Employees. An employee of a non-federal organization may be given a temporary appointment or may be detailed to the FAA in compliance with applicable agency guidance. Such an assignee may exercise supervision of FAA employees." It can be done if the agency so chooses.

Lockheed Martin -- Wally and I went to the Lockheed Martin open house for the people in Washington away from their facilities. They asked us to fill out a paper with some basic information, it is mainly so they can say you are aware of your Right of First Refusal. It does not mean you are making any decisions about whether or not you will work for them, simply checks a box that you�ve been notified a job offer is coming. If you do not attend an open house, they will do everything possible to get in touch with you so that you can�t come back and say you didn�t know about the job offer. They still don�t have all the details complete on where the hubs will be exactly, they are finalizing now with realtors. They will only move 351 people from closing facilities to hubs, unless things change. One thing that has already changed is the $5,000.00 that the relocating employees would receive after 12 months at the new location has been increased to 20% of your base pay. So now if you do move and stay at the hub for 12 months, you would get 1/3 upon departure and 2/3 after 12 months. If you leave within those 12 months, you�d have to repay that 1/3. It could be as much as $13,000.00, quite a difference, are they afraid they won�t get the people they need?? They talked about being able to buy leave, you can only do that during their open season the month of November. The issue of getting bonuses for up to 2 additional area knowledge ratings, you�d get $500.00 for each one up to $1,000.00. Be careful there, is that little bit of money worth you getting an OE/OD and getting fired for trying to do too much. If you are not medically qualified, you will not be paid as a controller so you will not keep the same rate of pay. LM overlooked the folks in FSDPS so they are working on packages for them, but if you are medically disqualified you will not be paid the same rate of pay from what I understand. Shift differentials are 10%, no more 25% for Sunday, and this excludes supervisors, they get no shift differential. Let your directors know if you get different or contradicting information at any of the upcoming open houses. If you want to try and IPP to a legacy facility, now, you can do that. LM doesn�t care as long as you�re in place by October 1, 2005. If you do this, it will be at your own expense. There�s a lot involved with an IPP; think about it seriously before you do it.

I did get a call Friday from a gentleman from the Government Accounting Office (GAO) and here is some of the information that I will share with him on Monday. The Agency loves to say that Flight Service costs $555 million per year to operate and that�s why they did the A-76. What they don�t tell you is how this money is broken out and what is included in this A-76 study/acquisition. These numbers I am going to give you are taken from the agency�s cost accounting system FY2003 Service Delivery Point Report for the year ending 9/30/03. So there might be a little variation from last year�s numbers, but I�m sure the numbers are pretty close.

So let�s start at the top and start subtracting:

TOTAL	$555,827,460
Minus Alaska	$ 53,502,910
Minus DUATS	$ 6,440,393
Minus AF	$ 94,060,386
Minus Overhead	$ 65,615,349
Minus Investment	$ 76,351,482
Minus RE&D	$ 456,506
TOTAL AFFECTED by A-76	$259,400,434

So let�s take the $259,400,434 and see what the total would be for 5 years.....$1,297,002,170.00 or approximately $1.3 Billion dollars for 58 facilities and approximately 2300 people. Let�s see Lockheed Martin�s bid was $1.9 Billion dollars for 20 facilities, approximately 1000 people, for a 5 year period.

None of this takes into account the millions of dollars it has taken the agency to do this A-76/acquisition and what the cost was to set up the Office of Competitive Sourcing with office space, salaries, and awards.

Let�s face it folks, this is some of the best smoke and mirrors the agency has ever done.

Another question I have is, since 1995 to present, we have attrited 1043 people. What has happened to all the money that was ear marked for PC&B for flight service, someone want to do the math on this? For the past 10 years we have continued to do more with less and still end up in this disaster.

These are the FAA�s numbers, I did not make them up.

Coming up next week -- Meeting with the Administrator and BOD on Tuesday. Debriefing on the contract award on Wednesday.

#17, March 10, 2005

The meeting on Tuesday March 8th with Jim Washington, Ventris Gibson, Administrator Blakey and Associate Administrator Bobby Sturgell did not have the information or outcome that I had hoped for. With having the leaders from both sides of the table together, I had hoped that we would have gotten RIF negotiations complete or close to being complete. It now seems we are waiting for the agency to review a few more items and they will make a decision on language our RIF team proposed within 7 to 10 days from the meeting. We talked about some of the problems in the field, EMP 1.18 and the history behind it. It seems that if we wanted to have people kept government employees and detailed to LM it would take legislation. OPM has already told the agency that they could not use EMP 1.18 for this circumstance, the policy was put in place to detail people to other companies or organizations for career progression not to protect people�s retirement. The agency has been working with other agencies VA and DOD to help place people, it�s nothing official like the Intra agency placement program. Ms. Gibson is supposed to get me copies of the letters she has sent to different agencies.

For my Brothers and Sisters in Alaska, Ms. Blakey was asked if there was any plan to do an A-76 on the Alaskan facilities and she said no.

Mr. DeGaetano was supposed to be at the meeting, but he had some meetings on the "hill" that popped up last minute. What Mr. Washington did say is that it will be up to him and Mr. DeGaetano to make the decision of whether or not to turn on LM on October 1, 2005. The phase in can be from 6-9 months which could bring the transition date until November 1, 2005. No word on when that decision will be made.

We asked Ms. Blakey about the recent retention bonuses promised to Managers and she said that she felt the Managers were taking on a "double burden" in having to balance their personal lives and keep the facilities running. Now don�t kill the messenger! There was discussion after that and I expressed my displeasure with this issue, but it�s a done deal. Understand there are some good managers out there and for those that are really trying to help people get through this tough time, Thank You. I won�t waste any more time on the others.

The Directors brought up several issues and we did meet for about 2 hours and 30 minutes, I just wish more had come out of it.

Yesterday was the debriefing on the contract award from ACA which ran from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm and was very informative. Here comes the part which you all are not going to like. Our attorneys have asked me to remain silent on what happened yesterday, until we digest all the information. The attorney�s we have hired for this have done this before and are outstanding, their advice is invaluable at this point. I will say that ACA would not give us any information that was proprietary in nature i.e., anything specific we asked in regards to the LM bid would not be answered. The ACA staff did do a good job of answering pages of questions that we had submitted. As soon as I can talk more about the process and information I will, but I have to take the attorney�s advice.

Let me now correct something I had in my last update. I had looked at the SIR and asked a few people about the LM bid being considered on a 5 year basis or 10 year basis and all I got was it a 5 year contract with a 5 year option. Well, if you want to get the information right simply put the wrong information out in an update and everybody will then tell you the answer! Here is what I said:

"So let�s take the $259,400,434 and see what the total would be for 5 years.....$1,297,002,170.00 or approximately $1.3 Billion dollars for 58 facilities and approximately 2300 people. Let�s see Lockheed Martin�s bid was $1.9 Billion dollars for 20 facilities, approximately 1000 people, for a 5 year period. "

The LM bid is for 10 years. Even if you take the $259,400,434 and round up for 10 years you get $2.6 Billion Dollars. So more than LM, right? Well if you look at that figure for 58 facilities and approximately 2300 people there is still a big difference in the LM bid which is $1.9 Billion for 20 facilities and approximately 1000 at the end of two years. I�m not going to go any further into the math, because I�d have to break down how much each facility costs and PC&B and so forth but I think you get the picture. It seems that folks in FAA HQ have been told to stop using the cost savings figure of $2.2 Billion! Do you think they are getting caught in this mis-representation?

I apologize for the mistake and hope this corrects it.

Wally has asked me to forward a memo from him and a copy of a letter he would like you to ask your congressional representatives to sign. If you can get a copy of the letter to your representatives, ask them to sign, and give them the contact name and phone number. They will be attached with this update, if you don�t see them, ask your director. Wally will also have some other legislation information in the next day or two, he had hoped to have it for you by the end of this week, but it may get pushed into next week.

Kate Breen

#18, March 12, 2005

By now you should all know that the MEO has filed a protest of the process used in the recent contract award to Lockheed Martin. The protest will be available Monday on the following web site www.procurement-lawyer.com I�m not sure what time it will be put on so please be patient if it�s not there at 8:00 am. Our attorneys have asked that I not comment on the MEO protest and I will abide by their wishes.

I did get a few more responses from invited guests who cannot attend the annual meeting. Mr. Boyer and Administrator Blakey will not be able to attend due to previous travel/schedule plans. Lockheed Martin would not be able to give us any other information other than what they are providing at the facility visits so it doesn�t look like they�re coming either. After we get through the work at the beginning of next week, I�ll get an agenda out to folks. If you have any questions or ideas for the future, please get them to your FacReps if they are going or their designee. We�ve got a lot to talk about and I want it to be a dialogue, not a monologue!

Wally asked me to attach his update to the bottom of this, so read on. I will get another update out by mid-week. Tomorrow I fly to ATL for a union meeting in MCN, I�ve been to BDR and sat in on a Central Region telcon. My goal is to get out more and talk to people face to face.

Before I talk about time lines for the MEO protest, let me talk about the letter addressed to Administrator Blakey from the members of Congress. As of today, there are only 5 signatures on the letter, out of 435 members of the house and approximately 100 members whose constituents are affected by this acquisition, we only have gotten 5 signatures. If you haven�t gotten to your congressional members yet, do it today. The deadline for signatures is COB this Friday March 18th, if your members have questions have them contact Auke Mahar-Piersma ( Rep. Kucinich�s office 6-8138) right away.

The MEO protest has been filed and we have asked to intervene in the process to ensure that your interests of being directly affected employees are heard and protected. The Status Conference between ODRA and the MEO will be Wednesday March 16th. The response from ACA regarding the suspension of activities until this protest is decided is due to ODRA on Wed. March 16th, the MEO has to respond to the ACA response by Friday March 18th. At that point it will be up to ODRA to make the decision of whether or not to suspend all activities until the protest has been decided. The entire time period for the protest itself can be up to 100 days, but we should have a decision of whether the phase in period continues fairly soon. The Acquisition team (ACA) has until March 30th to get their response to the protest allegations into ODRA.

NAATS on behalf of the majority of directly affected employees will be filing their protest tomorrow with ODRA and the Contracting Officer. It will be a protected document until such time as either the MEO says it is ok to release the proprietary information or there is a redacted version put out for general release. As soon as it can be sent out, I will let you know.

Kate Breen

#20, March 16, 2005

Our attorneys have delivered a protest to the Office of Dispute Resolution for Acquisition (ODRA). It is a protected document which means I can not release it to the membership until we get it cleared with the MEO, in the meantime Mr. Nadler is working on an executive summary that can be released. The protest is a 40 page document with serious allegations about the evaluations process that lead to the Lockheed Martin award on February 1st.

As soon as I have more information on the release or schedule I will let you know.

The protest is posted on the website for you to read, and some additional information on the MEO's filings can be found at http://www.procurement-lawyer.com/briefs.htm that brings you to the briefs page click on the FAA ODRA section. Our attorneys filed responses to Lockheed's challenge to my standing to file on behalf of the directly affected employees and the ACA response to ODRA on stopping any transition activities until the contests are ruled on. If we can post those, I'll get them on the website by Monday.

There has been a �Special Master� assigned to the case, he is Judge Edwin B. Neill and from what I hear he is a very intelligent, fair minded person. His job is to review all the documents and make a recommendation to ODRA prior to ODRA ruling on the protests.

What I don't know yet is any definite time lines of when things will be decided, as soon as more of that information unfolds I'll pass it along. I am hopeful that a decision on whether or not to suspend transition activities will happen by next week.

Jim Washington has not stepped down as VP as rumors would lead you to believe. He simply is recused from any transition activities concerning Lockheed Martin, he is continuing as Vice President of Flight Services.

We have heard nothing from either the agency or the Commission on the EEOC age discrimination case, if we hear nothing by March 31 st , we will pull the case out of the administrative process and introduce the case into court. New England Regional Director Mike Sheldon has agreed to be the point person on this issue for me so I can concentrate on the protest issues.

There have been no decisions yet on either the suspension of continued LM and HR activities or on our standing that LM has challenged.

On the suspension of activities, it is the Administrator that will make the final decision on that. The Special Master (Judge Edwin Neill) will be involved in the merits of the litigation, not the suspension issue. ODRA will present the Administrator with the facts and she will decide whether to suspend or not. There is no legitimate reason that the agency cannot agree to suspend HR activities (distribution of RIF notices and LM job offers) until these contests are decided. If the Administrator denies that suspension, it is for pure political reasons and not for what's best for the employees and the agency. If I'm wrong I'll apologize, but I've seen no reasoning to support the agency going forward other than to strip people's career transition rights including EMP 1.9.

The LM challenge to our standing issue should be resolved soon also, our attorneys have done a great job defending our position.

There have been dozens of filings, motions, and pleadings generated mostly by LM trying to challenge standings, the interveners, and just about everything else under the kitchen sink. Never being through this before, I've talked to folks that have been and they say this is pretty normal.

ACA's response to ODRA in response to both contests is due April 13 th . There have been no dates set for the contesters or interveners to get there comments in, but it should follow normal time frames which I believe is 5 business days after the response.

The attorneys have asked for an extensive list of documents to be delivered before the agency (ACA) makes their response on April 13 th . We will not see these documents, only the attorneys will get that information under a protective order. I am not hiding anything, or keeping secrets, or trying to make you feel like mushrooms, that is just the way things are done. Neither the BOD nor I will be privy to any of that information.

There is a meeting this Tuesday in the ODRA's office from 10a-12n for the attorneys. The agency (ACA) supposedly has answers to our allegations, so I can't wait to hear what the attorneys have to say after the meeting. Again because information that is under a protective order may be discussed I cannot attend. I have complete confidence in Mr. Nadler and his team to represent us and our allegations.

Let me switch gears here and talk a little about the Age Discrimination complaint. We still have not heard anything from the EEOC or the agency on it so we are planning on pulling it out of the administrative process and placing it in US District Court on Thursday March 31, 2005. There will be a press conference to announce this on Thursday afternoon at 1:00 pm. Mike Sheldon the New England Regional Director has taken the lead on this and has been working with Jennifer Zamora (PR Rep) and Denise DeStefano (Office Administrator). I can't thank them enough for helping out with this while the protest is in full swing.

I know postings to the web site have fallen off, but due to some personal problems our web master John Dibble is unable to continue doing that valuable job for us. John has worked for years on the web site and most recently as NW Mountain Regional Coordinator. His help and dedication over the years has been invaluable, thanks John!

Which brings me to a request, we need someone to take over as web master as soon as possible. It entails posting information and updating the web site, not being that computer literate, I'm sure there is more entailed. This will need to be done from your private computer, and not on duty time. Currently there is no official time or payment for services, you will be reimbursed for any expenses you incur. Doesn't make it sound like very much fun or profitable, but I want to be honest so you know what you're getting into! If you can help out, please let your director know as soon as possible, we will try to make a decision at the BOD meeting in New Orleans. In the mean time Denise has been learning about posting on the web site and I hope she can at least get information posted for now. The woman is amazing!

We expect to go into the annual meeting with a lot to talk about, if you cannot attend please send your ideas and questions with people who are attending. If we need to stay until midnight Thursday, we will do that!

If I get any decisions today, I'll be sure to get them out. For those who celebrate Easter, have a great holiday, take some time off from this mess and enjoy the day with your family. I look forward to spending the day with mine who happens to be the best family in the world, not that I'm prejudiced!