Oh look, a squirrel.
In no particular order.
It's certainly possible that my negotiation team folded like Biff when Mgt said no friggin way are we willing to entertain the idea of improving our A plan (now Biff don't con me)
But I think it went more like this
NC-We want to improve the A plan. Mgt-No. not willing to discuss it. NC-We want to improve the A plan. Mgt-No. not willing to discuss it. NC-We want to improve the A plan. Mgt-No. Not willing to discuss it.
NC-huddle up boys, starting to get the idea that Mgt's not willing to improve the A plan. What do you think? Keep asking? Or try and sell them on paying us for our sick leave? Maybe we can work wring some $$ out in exchange for that advance retirement notice thing they want (Absolutely no insider knowledge on my part, purely a hypothetical)
FedEx can, and I expect will be able to in the future, afford to improve the A plan. But there's a reason that Warren Buffet recommended against creating a pension plan in the 70s, and a reason Fortune 500 companies have been kiboshing pensions for a couple decades now.
Think back to summer of 2015, FedEx was parking jets and having service failures almost nightly due to insufficient crewmembers...and even with that pressure, Mgt wasn't willing to adjust our earnings cap. Not even a smidgen of an offer came across the table. Not even an we'll tie it to the IRS cap. Or index it for inflation starting as of some future date.
Pension funds. In order for a Union to Steal Pension funds the Union needs to be in control of said money. Anyone think FedEx is willing to concede Control?
Fortune 500 companies have a Love\Hate relationship with DB pension plans. Love them because they retain the $$ and can use earnings on those funds to artificially prop up their returns. Hate them because if they don't kick in enough $$ or generate enough $$ then the Feds will be calling and requiring them to pony up some of their cashflow thanks to ERISA laws passed, and improved on over the years to protect Us-the workers.
One of the big drivers of our pax brethren's pension failures was unrealistic return assumptions by Mgt---hey, if we keep getting this 15% return on our pension plan we don't have to add any money. We can use that money to go mano-a-mano with Southwest only we'll charge 10$ less than their fares. (well, until they give up on expanding to that airport). And those unrealistic returns didn't seem so unrealistic during the dot.com era. Just by JDSU, my money's doubled. No, buy the QQQ. Buy a whole lot of stocks those old Fuddy Duddies like Warren Buffet avoided because they just couldn't understand how they'd make $$. Forget that, I'm putting all my money on AOL. Buy GOOGLE, that's just a search engine. What idiot would want to buy that? Apple, that's so old school they fired their founder. Apple's a sucker's bet.
And just after everything collapsed...9-11. What an economic one two punch.
And everything's on here so far is Internet speculation.
So the simple question for the future is-stick with our current A plan or at least entertain the possibility of change.
Our A plan future value is simple math. And I wouldn't be too surprised to extrapolate hourly raises into the future and find that a 777 FO is going to be able to meet the earnings cap, all too soon.
Maybe this hybrid option, well, creates opportunities for something better. Maybe the FDA method UPS has creates opportunities for something better,
Don't know. But I'm at least willing to listen, and read, and pontificate from time to time on the internet about what I think