Viktorbravo wrote:

I would love to be able to nomally drop trips and forfeit the pay. If we could do that I figure I would just work every third month. I'm not being a smartass by saying that, but I live a very simple life where I dont need much money from UPS as I work at other sources. My ultimate goal is to be free of a paycheck from anyone other than myself. I may very well be a rare breed of the business in that respect. At SWA, I could do this trip drop thing as a normal way of life. Not sure about FDX. I cant blame the company for wanting me to work and not letting me drop trips though. Its just the way it is. Hey, if I hire a person, I want them to do the work of one employee so I dont have to hire an extra body just to do the work of one person. Hiring individuals costs money. I understand this. Although I think a little more flexibility would bring us up to industry standard. But, its all supply and demand and right now our professions are on the short end of the stick. However, for whatever reason, we did not negotiate this into our current contract.


Some insight from the "other" side:

Here at AWA we have a very flexible drop/pick-up system. I have dropped down to as low as 40 hours and picked-up as high as 99 hours. As someone else said, work hard, play hard !

BUT, BUT, BUT ... we pay dearly for our schedule flexibility with our bottom of the industry pay rates, among other things.

And furthermore, that schedule flexibility is based upon company staffing levels. Which means certain bases and seats have complete flexibility, while others have NONE. Our LAS base has been critically understaffed since it opened 2 years ago ... so their opinion of our system would be COMPLETELY different than mine.

Otherwise thanks for the informative post. One question, do you actually lose seniority while on PLOA ? I completely understand the longevity lose, but seniority seems odd ...

Later, CC