Well, having had a read through the draft agreement I have to say my gut feeling has been more than confirmed. There is nothing in there that gives me any confidence whatsoever that ATCO's will be protected by it.
In my experience the hazard analysis process is so blatantly skewed to give the (management) desired outcomes that it's a total farce. This is the only process in the proposal that is supposed to guarantee the safety of taking on all of the ATSA tasks.
In the past I've been repeatedly pressured (unsuccessfully) to agree to "mitigations" to allow a procedure which I've felt was fundamentally wrong, and I've seen management picking & choosing who to involve in the hazard analysis process so as to avoid those who might be likely to raise difficult issues.
Why should I have any reason to think that the hazard analysis for taking on the ATSA tasks will be any different?
The draft agreement has holes in it big enough to drive a bus through, and anyone who thinks management isn't planning to do exactly that needs to get a reality check.
It already includes a classic contradiction where in one part it says that
"Met observations are ancillary to the core operational task, and must not detract from that task."
followed by the very next paragraph that says
"A judgement will be made at the time whether to delay a met observation due to traffic, or to delay traffic in order to complete a met observation."
There's only one sensible way to vote on this deal & it's a big fat NO on the basis of the ATSA residual tasks issue alone. Never mind that there are so many other reasons why I don't think it's a good offer.
Anyone who thinks that piling extra administrative tasks onto tower controllers is a clever idea needs to read this:
Comair Flight 191 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This part in particular:
"In April 2007, the NTSB made four further recommendations, three measures to avoid fatigue affecting the performance of air traffic controllers,
and one to prevent controllers from carrying out non-essential administrative tasks while aircraft are taxiing under their control"