Here's a response to Blk 6 / 11:

This response to the Block 6 Rep by Capt CL, one of her constituents, in the spirit of fairness to those that have worked many hours on our behalf, and who feel their work has been wrongfully portrayed by her and others. Regardless of how you decide to vote on this TA, Capt CL and the many others that have worked tirelessly for us during these negotiations deserve our thanks. For the record, in the interest of accuracy, I asked Rep AS to back up her numbers of productivity givebacks in this TA as well, and have yet to receive a response...

AS,
As a member of Block 11 (instructor block) and Council 26, I read with interest your letter posted last evening and mailed to each of our council members. I am responding with no other motivation than my objective commitment to the truth, and my insistence that those representing FedEx crewmembers also share that same commitment. Your public and official disregard for the truth with respect to the TA (what is in it, and how it got there) requires this response.
Let me be clear: I am writing this letter to inform you that I do not support—in any way or for any purpose—false facts and misrepresentation of the truth in formal Association communications like those outlined in your letter.
As I’m sure you know, I served the Association as a volunteer on the Training and Standards subcommittee throughout these negotiations, since January, 2012. To put that in perspective for you (since you have served as a block rep for just about 6 months) and for others who may come to read this letter, let me also say that I participated in direct talks with the Company throughout the entire process, from openers in 2012 to this summer, on Section 11. Though my effort compared to many other subcommittee members and surely the main Negotiating Committee members is but a small contribution, I count (from my personal calendar) no less than 10 days of direct bargaining with the full team, and many more days in prep, follow-up, research, and rigorous survey administration and analysis. Additionally, included in this time were formal and informal meetings, not to exclude meetings with other subcommittee members at ALPA headquarters, and our individual homes at all hours of the day or night, whenever required or requested, over years of the hardest bargaining in our association’s history. I am speaking only for myself, but will be happy to provide you with the names of many more who would describe their volunteer activities in the same way if you would like to contact them.
Your characterization, along with Captain A (Block 11 Rep and LEC 26 Chairman) in a similar letter over a week ago, that this negotiation was somehow careless and unprepared and therefore doomed to fail is utterly false. From my unique vantage point in the process, it’s safe to say, that from a front row seat, my opinion on how negotiations were prepared, how they proceeded, and what they were guided by is the truth about what happened and how. Let me share but just a few facts with you:
1. We employed extensive surveys not just prior to talks, but early in the talks, and then again after openers. It’s true. We really did (I’m looking at survey results right now, professionally prepared by the Negotiating committee and dated as far back as December, 2011, just to be sure that I was telling you the truth in this letter).
2. The surveys are clear (and I bet they contain the same elements that any survey that you suggest would be conducted again in some future negotiation to replace them). The results include sensitive areas of concern to all of us, just as important and relevant today as they were when we had them prepared for us:
a. Protect the best Vacation system in the business, and allow no attacks on that very important aspect of our contract;
b. No PBS. Not now, not ever;
c. Obtain Industry-leading pay rates;
d. Preserve the best healthcare options in the industry, specifically, the popular buy-up option;
e. Clean up Reserve by implementing as many controls and transparency instruments as you can;
f. Fix 4.a.2.b so it can’t be “interpreted” to the detriment of the crew force if ever it needs to be applied again;
g. Fix the Secondary Line process, and as with Reserve, put in controls and transparency instruments so crewmembers have more ability to predict and plan their schedules;
h. Improve on our already industry-leading retirement;
i. Etc., etc., etc.
It seems that everyone who has not “been in the room” has an opinion about what negotiations are like (I know I sure did prior to 2012). That image, in turn, colors an individual’s view of the outcome. Unfortunately, the view of a few shabby, tired and unprepared pilots with their hats in their hands facing off against the X-Men is often the one that prevails. Clearly, it seems that I have to tell you how it really happened that we were able to achieve many—if not most—of our goals as identified by the crew force in ourmultiple surveys (see above).
During the more than 3.5 years of my involvement, I personally had the privilege to participate in many long days of bargaining with no less than a total of 8 different individual principal counterparts on the other side of the table (which is only one reason why Section 11 was not closed earlier than it did – the Company’s lineup kept changing until late 2014). During all of that time, I never felt out-prepared, out-numbered, out-researched, out-bargained, out-maneuvered or out-lawyered, primarily because we were not. We have an exceptionally qualified, experienced, knowledgeable and professional team not just at the core of our Negotiating Committee but all through its subcommittees and support staff at our ALPA office here in Memphis and at ALPA National headquarters. Imagining some future negotiating team that is somehow better equipped than that which we have had (and then broadcasting that as fact) is disingenuous at best, and deliberately misleading at least. I worked on but one section, but I have to tell you that our subcommittee was repeatedly held to the same high standards of professionalism and truth as other subcommittees and subject matter experts.
The results? I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is the truth: Section 11 for the first time in history at FedEx did not serve as a productivity pool for other sections to draw on, and improved from the 2006 agreement. Your summary of what we need to do the next time we bargain suggests that we have not done those things before… A gross misrepresentation of the process. Surveys? Done. Exhaustive Preparation? Done. Data collection and comprehensive research on every position? Done. Etc., etc., etc., Done, Done and Done.
To suggest that your colleagues who have been manning the negotiations battle stations for the past 4 years were “disconnected” from the crew force (re: multiple surveys and polls), that the MEC during that time did not meet with the crew force routinely (re: multiple and repetitive engagements by the MEC throughout the entire 3.5 years), that somehow our ALPA team didn’t have the resources and fortitude that some future team might have more of, and that our MEC lacked leadership and resolve is utterly false and misleading. Suggesting as both you and Captain A have that this team “caved” because they were “tired” and need to be “reinforced, strengthened or re-manned” by more energetic volunteers is but another insult to this group of pilots who I can tell you have displayed nothing but resolve and endurance and are not even close to their personal reserves. You should retract your letter for having made those assertions alone.
Further, I am not certain that I understand how the “pilot shortage” and “staffing issues” you discuss in your letter, and the “5%, 10% or even 15%” givebacks in “work rules” (which is it, anyway?) are related to reality. Those points are so poorly supported and articulated that I can only interpret them as incendiary comments designed to evoke an equally incendiary and baseless response. That is an insult to your readership, to your constituents, and to your fellow professional pilots at FedEx. As many readers also would like to know, I’d be very receptive to the details of your analysis. Please also provide that research with the same level of rigor and fact-checking, modeling and peer review that your current Negotiating Committee has been doing tirelessly for the past 4 years on every paragraph and sentence in the TA.
I have had many conversations with Captain A over the past few years, and very few with you. So I will share with you what I so often am forced to share with him: my test for whether a position, plan, assertion or statement (made in private or public, on the record or off the record, in conversation or in writing) is simple: Is it the truth?
In my rebuttal to Captain A following a letter that reads very similar to your own, I pointed out the responsibility of leadership to remain objective, informed, and mindful of facts and reality. I ask you to consider the damaging consequences of making claims against the actual content of the TA with vague numbers that are easily seized upon by bystanders, gross mischaracterizations of how negotiations proceeded from beginning to end, and vague and empty promises of some magical process that might follow any rejection of the TA. You’ve bought into a fantasy based on nothing but the personal hopes and views of individuals whose past involvement in negotiations have led to outcomes far beneath those achieved by the current Negotiating Committee in this round of negotiations.
A, have your personal opinion on the TA and vote with your head or your heart, to satisfy your personal professional goals and the needs of your own family. But stop there—as a member of the MEC you are expected to act professionally, truthfully and objectively. You can begin by retracting your recent letter.
Best regards,
CL