Originally Posted by
Lowslung
Well, they ain’t going backwards. We clearly need to be aiming at legacy pay rates plus some percentage in order to maintain competitiveness. A snap up clause would be great, but I don’t have my hopes up as FedEx failed to secure one. Of course, that’s all before we even talk about trip trades, trip change premiums, minimizing circadian shifts, adding 117 equivalent protections, a retirement bump, cash over cap, etc. You get the idea…it’s a long list, and while we certainly won’t get all of it, it’s going to take a solid 90% of what I just mentioned and then some to earn my yes vote. Make no mistake; for a whole lot of us ‘newer than 2014’ folk, this contract is going to have to be fairly epic for us to vote it in. “Best we could negotiate” and “there’s only so big a slice of the pie” excuses won’t cut it this time around.
As a post 2014 hire, I agree that patience is wearing thin with many aspects of this job. Mediocre, at best, hotels, lagging pay (relative to legacies, inflation, and soon FedEx), lagging pension (relative to both inflation and now FedEx), 15 yr instead of 12 yr pay tables, no cash over cap, miserably lagging line construction, lagging trip trade system, lagging Reserve rules, lagging reschedule protections, and a worn out fleet. Obviously, some things are completely out of the EB’s and NC’s hands, but some things are their job to obtain for us at the negotiating table.