Frontier notified the Union on Thursday, August 17th that they were going to declare a surplus under Article 7 of our collective bargaining agreement. The impacted titles are Service Consultant in Business Solutions and Sales Consultant and Service Representative in the Consumer Group.
The date of August 17th is significant because we had day two of arbitration scheduled for a previous surplus grievance. It was postponed because the company witness was not available. However, the company witness was assigned to deliver this news to the Union. We will pursue recourse for that issue with our Labor Attorney.
Article 7 is a very serious article in our contract and should not be used to give voluntary severance offers that have been previously negotiated. There is not a path to do a standalone voluntary severance offer. When the company declares a surplus using Article 7, people get very unnerved. In this case the company will only solicit volunteers, and only volunteers will be separated from the company with an EVSP. We are currently challenging this process; this is the fourth time the company has done this. We will file a fourth grievance for this event.
The company has clearly informed the Union that no employees will be forced off their title to relieve the surplus. This company clearly does not have any concern about making people nervous about their jobs. This is the new Frontier brought to you by Nick Jeffrey. We will continue to police and enforce our contract to protect our members.
