Region X Monthly Update | February 2025
| Brothers and Sisters in Region X, All of us in Region X extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to those who were impacted by the recent tragedies at both Washington National Airport, and in Philadelphia. To our air traffic Brothers and Sisters who were involved, thank you for continuing to work through the difficult shift, and continuing to provide the safety of flight to the rest of your aircraft while you were all going through what will likely be one of the worst days of your lives. Your devotion to duty and professionalism is greatly appreciated. Just know, Region X supports you. To our Region X family, while we communicate regularly with your representatives, we wanted to get something out directly to all of our membership. Right now, we have more questions than answers on deferred resignations, back to the office mandates, hiring freezes, probationary employee status, etc. There are quite literally new challenges arising every day. What we do know is that we do not work for OPM, we work for the FAA and that is where we take our direction from. To date we have received no guidance from the FAA on any of the issues stated above. We have a binding collective bargaining agreement with the FAA, which was signed by the NATCA President Nick Daniels and the previous FAA Administrator prior to the new Administration taking office. Very soon, our National Executive board will be issuing a statement in response to the latest OPM message declaring contractual telework provisions invalid. Watch for that message. We recognize that our telework and the new remote work articles are very important to many of us. As you all know, we retained Article 68 – Telework giving our BUEs the right to participate in the FAA’s telework program. We anticipate there will be a lot of pressure under this Administration to undermine our ability to telework. Even more pressure than we are currently dealing with. Direction is already going out to management and non-bargaining unit employees that they are to report to the office full time beginning February 10. No direction from the FAA has been provided for bargaining unit employees. Our message to you is that if you get any direction to report full time, even in violation of your telework agreement, that you comply and notify your representatives immediately. For now, we are operating under the rules of our new CBA, the Indigo Book, and we will fight any efforts to overturn or bypass any of the agreed upon terms. As Federal employees, we are always required to comply with direct orders but NATCA will act against anything that violates our legal binding contract. Another real time issue is OPM’s deferred resignation offer. NATCA has received no information other than the emails sent to all employees from OPM. While we cannot make this decision for you, NATCA is strongly recommending you do not respond to this offer. We do not have any information on how this will impact our members current benefits, pay, the ability to work in the federal government in the future, retirement contributions, or even who is eligible for the offer. If you do agree to this offer, it is likely that there will not be much NATCA can do if the Administration changes the terms in any way. Another thing to consider is that this is an effort to not only to downsize the federal workforce, but to also will weaken our collective strength. Anyone who chooses to accept this ill-advised offer will very likely go without any replacement for the foreseeable future. That leaves all of the work and projects that they were doing to be assigned to those who stay. If any of us are even slightly considering this, please take into account your Brothers and Sisters you are walking away from. Please consider the position you are choosing to put your NATCA family in. There are times in each of our lives when we must stand strong together. This is one of those times. This is all happening very fast and we know the February 6th deadline has many implications, but this is where we are today. We all need to know that NATCA is 100% focused on these immediate issues and will provide guidance when we can. In the meantime, continue being the highly professional, highly skilled, and most importantly, highly valued aviation safety professionals that Region X is known for. We can get through this together. In Solidarity, Mark NATCA Academy Courses – The 2025 academy course line up has been set and is available through the NATCA portal. Retirement webinars and in-person seminars are extremely valuable and very popular. If justified we can possibly overfill a course. Get with your local leadership as the local 2025 budgets are being set and plan now to send as many of your local members as you can.  Contact Ms. Lisa Head, (202) 628-5451 if you have any problems enrolling in retirement seminars. Contact Carolyn Kamara, for all other academy courses. Talk to your local leadership about attending RT-1, Secretary-Treasurer training and check the portal for even more course offerings.  NATCA in Washington – March 24 – 26, 2025 – Save the dates! Visit the NiW page for more information. Politically active local members wanted! Become part of our NATCA legislative force on capitol hill. Make this a topic at your local meetings.  Communicating for Safety 2024 – September 15 – 15, 2025 – This is the premier aviation safety event in held in Las Vegas, and hosted by NATCA. You can meet and interact with industry leaders, agency counterparts, and most important, our NATCA family. Excused absence from work with 45-days advance notice and proper coordination. Talk to your local leadership for more information, or go to the CFS page on the NATCA portal.  Registration for NATCA’s 20th Biennial Convention Is Now Open! Register today and plan to be at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco from May 9-11, 2025, with the opening ceremony taking place on the evening of May 8. Early registrants will get the best prices on all Convention events. Room reservations can be made directly during the Convention registration process. The cutoff date and time to book your room is April 11, 2025, at 5 p.m. PDT or when our Union’s room block is sold out. Visit the 20th Annual NATCA Convention page on the portal for more information and to register! NATCA Member Benefits – Take Advantage! Grab back some of your dues money with great NATCA benefits! Take a discounted cruise, get a Snooz for your baby, apply for a college scholarship, or save $1,100 a year on home and car insurance like Curt Howe did this year. Check out the Benefits website (behind the firewall) and feel free to email the Benefits team at the address provided. https://www.natca.org/benefits/ [email protected]  Want to recognize your work, your coworkers efforts, members that do community outreach, or other really cool human achievements that our NATCA members do everyday? Or perhaps you just have pictures from a NATCA function worth sharing? Send pictures and brief captions/narratives to our own Ms. Lisen Minetti. If your content is acceptable and approved, Lisen will work to get your valued input into our Region X Facebook (please like and follow) page and NATCA National Website. We also have a new clearing house for submitting news articles to our National Communications Committee. Region X National Contact Informations Region X National Leadership Mark Rausch Regional Vice President Bob Aitken Alternate Regional Vice President Nicole Wysong Alternate Regional Vice President Allen Casey Alternate Regional Vice President Gwendolyn Kimbrough AFN National Representative Felicia Reeves Airports National Representative Patrick Massie Aircraft Certification National Representative Allen Strah AIT National Representative Freidy Lazala Drug Abatement National Representative Ralph Pagington Field Automation Support Team (FAST) Kevin Hammond Operations Support Facilities (OSF) Team Region X National Committee Representative Don Schmeichel – National Safety Committee Bob Aitken – National Training Committee Lisen Minetti – National Communications Committee Freidy Lazala – National Drug & Alcohol Committee Samantha Giberson – National Safety Committee Mike Martin – National Constitution Committee Anthony Barksdale – National Organizing Committee Jefferson MacDonald – National Organizing Committee Homer Benavides – National OSHA Committee Quang Nguyen – National Benefits Committee Don Schmeichel – National Historical Committee Jason Holland – National Legislative Committee Dawn Forde – National Legislative Committee Corey Glaze – National Pay Team & Collaboration Facilitator Ed Szczuka – Finance Committee, Onboarding Corey Glaze – Finance Committee (Mentee) Allen Strah – IT and Regional Communications Homer Benavides – National OWCP Committee Brittan Smith – Union Synergy Committee Nicole Wysong – National Reloaded Committee |
