TonyC

The Company sent us their openers in January 22, 2013, and they met with our Negotiating Committee 7 days later. The Company Openers consisted of traditional openers, vague bullet points to indicate sections they wanted to bargain without revealing the specifics of what they wanted to achieve. They also contained what amounted to a full-language (almost full-language) proposal for Pilot Interactive Bidding System -- PIBS.

POINT 1: The introduction of PIBS in the environment of Interim Discussions or Mid-Term Talks was a slap in the face to pilots interested in earnest, productive conversations.

POINT 2: The use of full-language in a proposal given to all pilots amounted to Direct Dealing. Knowing that the Negotiating Committee would not forward their proposal to the pilots, The Company sent it to pilots directly in the hopes that some would find it amenable, and perhaps a fracture in the crew force could be exposed and exploited.

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The Negotiating Committee briefed those in attendance and answered questions at the Memphis Joint Council Meeting on February 6, 2013. I was in the Sim (CMV2), so I could not attend. I do not recall hearing or reading about any public statement made by the Negotiating Committee that they were displeased with the inclusion of PBS in The Company's openers.

The February 12, 2013, Negotiating Committee Update mentioned nothing about Section 25 SCHEDULING, and, in the context of Section 4 MINIMUM GUARANTEES AND OTHER PAY PROVISIONS, barely mentioned PIBS.

On Saturday, February 23, 2013, we held a "Contract Kickoff" event at the Germantown Centre -- I was in attendance. After he spent a good deal of time praising the Company for the pace and tone of negotiations, I asked our Negotiating Committee Chairman if he was talking about the same Company that slapped us in the face with PIBS, and went straight to direct dealing with their openers. He denied that it was direct dealing, and he was confident that we could still negotiate even with a preferential bidding system on the table.


If ever there was a moment to rally the troops, that was it. The moment we got slapped in the face with PBS was when we should have stood up a Strike Center (a real Strike Center, not a single office in the crowded Kirby property) and started scheduling informational picketing. We should have begun educating and preparing the pilots for the battle ahead, because The Company made it crystal clear from that moment that they had no real intentions of negotiating. By now, we should all be conversant, no fluent, in the steps of the RLA process. By now we should all be prepared financially, to withdraw our services without causing financial doom. Right now we should all be standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind a Negotiating Committee who can then stand up to The Company and demand they take PBS off the table completely. We squandered a unifying moment, and we've watched a spring pass, and a summer pass, and a shareholders meeting pass, and a peak pass, and another spring pass, and another summer pass, and we're going to take a pass on another shareholders meeting, and before you know it, we'll be scratching our heads wondering how another peak has passed.

Instead of making a stand then, we now have a complacent, uninterested group of pilots who are just now beginning to get a little impatient. The Company knows what's behind the Negotiating Committee Chairman's demands, and they know they can be ignored.




But wait, it's even worse than that. We've been led to believe that PIBS was part of The Company's Openers -- it was something they just dropped on us at the conclusion of the Interim "Big Boy" talks, a surprise even to the Negotiating Committee. However, the Negotiating Committee Chairman let it slip once, and a careful look at The Company's Openers documents confirms, the PIBS proposal was given to the Negotiating Committee THREE MONTHS EARLIER.

The letter at the back of The Openers from FedEx Vice President, Labor Relations John Maxwell was HAND DELIVERED to our Negotiating Committee Chairman on October 23, 2012. (CLICK HERE TO VIEW (pilot.fedex.com access required) Section 25 Discussion Document) In that letter, Mr. Maxwell explains that "Company negotiators, subject matter experts and Flight Operations executives have spent hundreds of man-hours developing a comprehensive, full language discussion document for Section 25 of the CBA."


Did you hear anything about PIBS back then, in October, 2012? NO! We were continually told that things were going great, The Company was being really open, and we were getting things done that would have never been possible during traditional RLA Section 6 Negotiations. Our amendable date passed with zero fanfare, and life was just peachy.

Well, perhaps we should NOT have learned about it then. Perhaps the Negotiating Committee Chairman should have informed The Company right then and there that such a proposal could never be ratified by this pilot group, and warned them that including such a proposal in their openers would result in dire consequences. That would have given The Company an opportunity to reassess, produce a reasonable Section 25 proposal instead, and save a little face with their revised Openers.

But that sounds too much like walking out of the car dealership if they won't meet your price demands, sounds a little too much like conflict, sounds a little too much like drawing a line and standing up for the pilots you represent. That doesn't fit the pattern of they'll be nice to us if we'll just be nice to them. It sounds a little too much like tried and true negotiations tactics that have actually resulted in successes.

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I'll leave it to you to find the very first hint from the Negotiating Committee or the MEC Chairman that expressed dissatisfaction concerning either the pace or the content of our negotiations. I think you'll find the FIRST such expressions from a small handful of Block Reps.


In February, 2013, the MEC and Negotiating Committee were more interested in bargaining a 767F LOA than they were in standing up against PBS, and we were more upset about losing KCM.






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