Sounds good but you are wrong, the union can impose changes without your consent under certain conditions. Your recourse is that you can vote out your union and in your case-the APFA, the leaders of the union,(in the TWU our only option is to vote out the entire union, we cant vote out the International) but you are still stuck with what they agreed to even if you never got to vote on it. That was the TWU and AAs arguement when we-Local 562, sued to have the modified concessionary contract that Jim Little put in place without a membership vote thrown out.
By the way, the fact is that prior to 2003 sick calls on holidays were very low in AC maintenance, however it has skyrocketed ever since, despite the companys threats to those who called in sick. So there is a fix for the"Attendance problem", but the company does not want to address it. Go back to paying people a true holiday rate, if they are entitled to eight hours pay dont then penalize them by forcing them to work at half pay on the holiday, in the case of Flight attendants the company and the FAs never agreed to Holiday pay, maybe they should, then they wouldnt have the problems they do.
The company charges passengers an arm and a leg to travel around the holidays, why shouldnt the workers get a piece of that? Why should we give away premium time? The company doesnt let the opportunity pass, why should the workers? On the one hand they justify jacking fares up on and around the holiday by claiming the market price for a ticket at that time is more, well so are labor costs. Workers who have a life and a family they care about have to ask themselves if its really worth missing such premium time with their family when the company does not feel that its worth paying them a premium rate for doing so. So the company wants it both ways, they want and do screw over the passengers but they dont want to share any of the spoils with those whose labor makes the killings possible.
That old BS line about how those who call in sick are penalizing their coworkers is pure crap, nobody buys it. If you work harder because somebody else didnt show up then you are a fool, do what you can as if it was any other day, after all the pay is the same as any other day, or in our case its half that, maybe we should work half as hard.
The fact is the company insists on penalizing the workers on holidays, reaping in huge revenues and demanding that the workers sacrifice spending those times with their families and giving them nothing in return for the extraordinary sacrifice they are demanding.
