NAATS HEADQUARTERS EMAIL UPDATE

Volume 3, #91

September 16, 2003

A six month bill extending funding authorization for the FAA will be offered today. This may be initiated in the House but the Senate version, sponsored by Senator Lautenberg, will include privatization language. The specific part of Section 305 that applies to us states:

(c) FLIGHT SERVICE STATIONS.--

(1) IN GENERAL.--Within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall transmit to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure a report on the Federal Aviation Administration�s plan to revamp the flight service station program. The report shall include--

(A) an analysis of the impact of the plan
on costs, effectiveness, and the need for
redundancies in the program;
(B) a comparison of the existing costs of
the program with alternatives;
(C) workforce needs (including any necessary transition period); and
(D) space needs.

(2) LIMITATION.--The Secretary of Transportation may not authorize the transfer to a private entity or to a public entity other than the United States Government of the flight service station program or any component thereof until the report required by paragraph (1) has been transmitted to the Congress and the Congress has authorized any such proposed transfer.

We ask that you call your congressional representatives and ask them to support the Senate spending extension.

National A76 Representative Kate Breen, PWS Team Lead Mark Jaffe and I met with ACA-1 Joann Kansier, ARA-1 Charlie Keegan, ATS-1 Steve Brown and ADA-1 Shirley Miller yesterday to attempt to resolve the PWS issues. Again, we were unsuccessful. There are two significant issues; (1) participation by our PWS team representatives and (2) the contract award date.

Regarding (1) We have asked that our team representatives be allowed to help write the requirements document as well as the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP). FAA management continues to state that our team representatives can "comment" on the requirements document and QASP after the contractor has written the documents. They seemed to completely misunderstand the significance between the two concepts. It�s important to note that there are no legal or regulatory problems with our helping to write these documents; it�s merely an arbitrary decision by ACA to restrict our participation. Of course this flies in the face of OMB guidance and statements from both ACA and the Administrator on involving the workforce to the maximum extent in this process.

On (2) ACA stated that the Administrator made the decision to move the completion date up from July �05 to December �04. ACA went on to say that their concern was to get the process completed as soon as possible so that it wasn�t hanging over the heads of the employees. Our response that it�s much more important to the bargaining unit that the process be conducted properly instead of in a rush seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Next stop for both these issues is the FAA Administrator.

Wally Pike.

Wally Pike