Friday was quite the busy day for the head sheds.
0900 CDT -- Tentative LOA Vote closed
0936 CDT / 1536 IST -- Message from the MEC Chairman announcing the results and advising us to expect an excess bid shortly -- "we will send you a separate communication regarding the bids (B727/B767) looking forward [which] will contain information specific to the actual bid published by FedEx."
1240 CDT -- FCIF published for Excess bid
1406 CDT / 2006 IST -- Message from MEC Chairman - the "separate communication" promised earlier in the day - arrives in Inbox. Sure enough, it has specifics about the excess bid.
It took less than 90 minutes from FCIF to Chairman's Message, and that message contained an in-depth analysis of the excess bid, including specifics about that bid. It takes longer than 90 minutes to just get a piece through the communications review, much less compose it and review it. I wonder if they might have had a heads up.
Why did I mention IST? That's Irish Standard Time, the time it is in Dublin. What I find even more remarkable than the careful orchestration of the various communications from The Company and The Association is that it all occurred when the MEC Chairman was attending the 68th Annual Conference of IFALPA (International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations) --
in Dublin, Ireland!
In this spirit of close cooperation -- and, as FLMD11CAPT likes to say, interest based bargaining -- it's comforting to know that an important member of our negotiating team believes that ...
"our medical benefits are too good. We pay less and get more than any other employee group at FedEx. It's not fair to them."
That's a quote from one of the members of "our" team, as spoken by him to a member of the other (?) "team". Since we're working together so well, I guess it doesn't matter whether it was one of their guys or one of our guys, right? It's BS, and I don't mean bovine excrement. (Well, it's that, too.)
.