Originally Posted by
scambo1
Do you have access to the raw pilot survey data or survey data in finished form after receiving a TA or ratifying a contract?
When your in house ALPA does a contract comparison for educational purposes, to whom are you compared? Beside ups.
You still have many of the legacy contract items (trips touching vacation, line bidding, etc.) how is the union working to keep these vs help FedEx reduce head count and increase efficiency?
I have never heard of anyone with access to the raw survey data or "crunched data" either before or after a TA. We get a very, very general statement from the union that our top issues are, for example, increased pay, no change to vacation, improved retirement, hold the line other benefits, etc. We also are told what the general unratifiable items are such as NO PBS at FedEx. I think we put out the unratifiable positions more because it was a communication data point for the "benefit" of the company.
We have many seniority, union pilots who are in management so any communication the union puts out to the pilots is delivered to the company too. For that reason alone, I don't ever see detailed openers or survey data being provided because it would infringe on the ability of us to negotiate freely. A poker game where one side must expose their cards isn't much of a game.
We receive contract comparison information generally when there is a TA. We benchmark off UPS and the major passenger airlines. So, yes, we are rooting you on in your contract negotiations!
Our pay, at the moment, compares very favorably to everyone. And, since you mentioned the "legacy" contract items, this is a major area where I think we're ahead of most other airlines (or Air Lines as I'm on your thread) as I don't think we work as much as most other carriers, which is an improvement in our QOL. For example, because we line bid, a week of vacation can kill an entire month's work.
FedEx tossed out PBS about half-way though this negotiation process. As you may suspect, this is a contract killer for virtually everyone as it would affect many, many sections of the contract and FedEx isn't transparent with their scheduling process and most of us don't trust them with the keys to PBS. If they stick to that position, we will never have an agreed upon TA. I've heard they wanted to give a 20% first year increase in pay to get this which I estimate would provide them with 30% more efficiency. They could reduce the pilot force by at least 15% which would stagnate everyone. The ripples from PBS for us would be unimaginable so it's a TA killer for everyone.