Originally Posted by FXDX

The guys who have 25 years of service and their high five have absolutely nothing to lose in their scenario of freezing the current A plan. They can only go up with adding another defined benefit plan to the current A plan. Guys who stand a lot to lose are those who were hired at a later stage in life and will never get 25 years of service or perhaps even a high five of $260. Pilots who are out on LTD could also be adversely affected in a similar fashion.

This effort is being led by pilots with nothing to lose and desperately trying to get some kind of bump in their retirement benefits before they hit 65. That would be ok if they also get real improvements for everybody else, but I'm not convinced that will happen.

Even if the company were shown these plans and they were able to save money and increase our benefits I'm not convinced they would do it. Either out of spite or for company morale. How could they justify increasing our defined benefit plans after freezing everybody else's just a few years ago? I think the fallout from such a maneuver is why the company refused to consider it in the last contract negotiation.

I'm also not sure this pilot group (57% of whom voted for the current contract) will have the fortitude to vote something new down that really doesn't increase every pilot's benefits. A lot of pilots are prejudiced against A plans because they or somebody they know lost theirs due to bankruptcy and that is a valid concern. They hear A plan and instinctively think it will never be there for them and will take any B plan bump to cast away the A plan.

We all know that its not possible to replace that $130K per year with B fund bumps under current IRS limits. I'll take the small risk of FedEx going bankrupt in the next 20-30 years over taking on all of the investment risk myself over that same time frame. I've got the B plan and my personal savings to put in the market to augment the A plan and that is enough personal risk for me.