I was teasing, and that's why I included the emoticon with the smile and the wink. I tried to start out with a light-hearted tone. I'm sorry that I apparently did not adequately communicate that intent.


Indeed, I doubted we would see anything over the weekend when we did not receive an update on Thursday (the last day of meetings) or Friday (the day before the Labor Day weekend). It's not very common to receive union communications on Saturday morning. We have a fantastic support staff in Memphis, and I think they should be able to enjoy the weekend free from work, but somebody had to interrupt their family time to publish the message. I was wrong -- we got Negotiator's Notepad: Update 19 on a holiday Saturday morning.

But the content is more of the same. The Company is continuing to delay, and we're playing along.

No, we don't pack it in. We take action, beginning last November when our CBA became amendable. Continuing until we have a TA and until it is ratified.


Good question.

Do you remember what happened the last time WE took a strike vote?

The Company invited our union President (the equivalent of our present day MEC Chair) to meet him in a dark parking lot to seal a deal with a handshake which hinged on us agreeing to NOT count the strike vote.

Still think strike votes don't matter to FedEx? Spare me the arguments that the President will never let us strike. Think about the press that FedEx would get if we voted to strike. Just like UPS customers did in 1987, customers would be scrambling en masse to find reliable alternatives for their shipping needs. It absolutely, positively matters.

But it doesn't just happen organically. It requires education and motivation, and a lot of it. And we as a pilot group have received none of it. We have not been prepared for is, and that failure rests squarely on the MEC.


Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. The problem is not the meetings -- it's the failure to do anything else. It's the failure to levy consequences for not meeting the goals. It's the failure to impose any motivation to accept our proposals for pay and retirement. There's no carrot, no stick, just an unlimited number of meetings on a calendar that extends through the end of the year and beyond.


This isn't about me, it's about US. I could retire and get on with my life and skip all this mess. But the pilots of FedEx deserve much better.

But since you asked, I'll play with your question. How would things be different? As only one vote out of 15, I obviously could not guarantee any action of the MEC, but I guarantee what I would be advocating for. For starters, I advocated for a Negotiations Kickoff Rally when negotiations began 6 months prior to the amendable date. Too many pilots were not even aware that we were officially in negotiations -- that was a failure to communicate to the membership. I would have advocated for a much more proactive education campaign to make sure every pilot knows not only the RLA process and where we stand in that process, but who is on the other side of the Negotiating Table from us. It's not the image the FedEx projects to the public, or even the image that hopeful pilots have when they interview for jobs here. The real FedEx who negotiates AGAINST us is much much different. I would have advocated for a Protocol agreement that included negotiation sessions sufficient to complete the deal by the Amendable Date, not 6 months later. When we reached the Amendable Date, I would have advocated for another Rally and the commencement of Informational Picketing on the first Sunday of every bid month. When we reached the end of originally scheduled meetings with no TA, I would have published The Company's Openers -- another way to open the starry eyes of pilots to the real character of who we're dealing with.

I would have advocated for our full participation in the ALPA-wide Informational Picketing on Labor Day weekend instead of scheduling a day of negotiations meetings on the same date. If FedEx wanted to avoid the bad publicity, they could write a big check. And speaking of checks, I would advocate for our Negotiating Committee to begin each meeting with The Company by announcing the size of the Retro Payment that would be required for an acceptable deal, and that number would be an absolute, non-negotiable minimum that would obviously go up with every passing day.

In short, I would advocate for a much more active approach to dealing with a party to negotiations who has a long and storied history of stringing us along with delays, stalls, and feet dragging. As I type this, a Delta pilot is shown on a national network with picketers behind him explaining how Delta pilots are prepared to strike. Meanwhile, who in the world is even the slightest bit aware that FedEx pilots are far behind the industry in pay rates and have a retirement commensurate with 25-year-old pay rates and IRS limits?

It is the responsibility of the MEC to prepare the membership for the actions that will be required to motivate The Company to complete the deal. Rather than accept that responsibility and act on it, they have elected to act like The Company has changed its spots and will play nice because we're being nice. So far we have done nothing to demonstrate we are ready to complete the deal. The words on our lanyards, Now is the Time, are meaningless without actions to support them.

I started off this post by admitting I was wrong, and I'll be thrilled to confess again that I was wrong if the current approach produces a ratifiable TA. But I'm not holding my breath.






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