The Atlanta Field Maintenance Operations has one of the largest geographical FMO areas and probably performs the most FMO work orders in the nation, over 7,000 tickets per year. We also probably contract out the most FMO work, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and perhaps in the millions per year.

And yet our Area Maintenance Technician staffing is now being reported by management to be three over our complement. We only have one AMT Steward and I have been asked to assist in his investigation into this matter. I know very little about how FMO/AMT staffing works so I would appreciate any help getting up to speed on this issue.

My vague understanding is that eWHEP is used along with registers x20 and x50 to calculate AMT staffing based on the previous year’s total work hours. The problem is that management won’t provide register x20 and x50 information, claiming they don’t know how to get it.

The first issue I see is that management is not showing the Union its math used in making its staffing calculations here. The work is increasing not decreasing so how are we now overstaffed?

The second issue I see is trying to determine if the subcontracted volume of FMO work is being counted as work hours? I doubt it, as that could explain the loss of AMT complement jobs here.

Occam’s Razor tells me that if management doesn’t understand what is going on with the FMO staffing calculation, then the AMT staffing here is almost certainly wrong. But if management does know what is going on with these calculations, then management is deliberately stonewalling the Union to conceal their contract violations.

Thanks for any advice you can give.

First Name: Michael
Last Name: Nodine
Email: apwunodine@gmail.com
Union/Local: APWU – Atlanta Metro Area Local 32
Office held if any: Maintenance Craft Steward/Alternate Steward