TonyC,
Great job of advancing the knowledge base of how we got here. One addition, this is anecdotal though, I have a vague recollection of our NC desiring to work on our A plan limit during the TA that resulted in CBA 2006.
You imply that FedEx is $200k to the good by limiting our raises to a slope below 3%, and relate that to less $$ available to put food on the table. But inflation has been running less than 3%, and doing so over the past 22 years. There are various inflation calculators available, but after plugging the $183.37 into several of them, $291.31 was the highest value I found. And that's significantly less than the $341.12 you used as a comparison. And still a sizable gap below the $335.56 of our current pay rate (Shoot, that $291 inflationary value is only slightly greater than current NB pay).
It would be great if we had indexed our A plan to the IRS limits for Defined Benefit Compensation, but we didn't. We didn't in 99, we didn't in 2006, and we absolutely totally failed to do so in 2015.
In fact, the Main emphasis from our Chairman regarding our TA goals in 2013, 14, and for his partial year of service in 2015 sounded a great deal like your proposed simplicity of restoring our combined Retirement Compensation to the 50% + level it once was.
If the PSPP had gone into effect, it would mean an extra $5800 (minimum) for every 25+ year Pilot with earnings in excess of $290k.
One difference between the PSPP proposed Benefit formulas compared to the previous tweaks\improvements\complications is that the Benefit is greater for those pilots furthest from retirement whereas in the past if you were "Young" your actual benefit was $0.
And you didn't address Why our NC added a bit more complexity to "make whole" a small percentage of our pilots had the PSPP been adopted. We have a small minority of pilots who choose to drop a sizeable percentage of their monthly schedule.
Pilot Compensation is the total package. Taxable Pay, B plan contributions, as well as the Promise to Pay Deferred Compensation of our Pension. I hope FastBurner will chime in with a WAG of what it would cost FedEx to improve our Pension to the $230k, but my mental math of an extra $100k per pilot stumbles over all the zero's.
And personally, I don't want all of our next CBAs compensation improvements to be Deferred in a Promise to Pay Pension.
What I've told my Reps, and submitted via the online survey that was available to each and every FedEx Pilot, is that I want improved pay, an improved Cash over Cap B plan, and improvements to our A plan-even if the only method of doing so is via a PSPP like Benefit Calculation change.
I also commented that there's nothing particularly sacred about a 2% "contribution\floor"...no reason that 2% couldn't be a 2.1% or 2.2% value. After all, the Cash Benefit Pension plan FedEx recently terminated for our fellow employees used 5% (and 8% for some)