IMO-The company wants to keep the ledger black.....and do something to keep the shareholders happy amidst all of the negative news the media is reporting.

But, how doomed can we really be given the companys recent increase in the dividend (a 10% increase just this past June)

Think of what that means, there are 311M shares outstanding getting 44 cents per year, so, freezing the dividend for a year would save 150 M.

FedEx has 1.54B cash on hand. How many years of BLG buyup would it take just to get to a mere 1B cash on hand?
Assuming the buyup is costing FedEx 1M a month (read it in another post, so, don't know how valid that number is) it would take 45 years of buyup to drop the cash down to 1B.

FedEx owns lots of stuff, thus, we aren't leveraged in the same way the majors are. Our debt to equity is .13 Delta's is 4.24 Or, if you'd prefer, UPS is .987

What that really means is that FedEx is very financially healthy. Sky is not falling, it's certainly dropping, but FedEx has many advantages available to navigate and survive during these troubled times.

It is my opinion that FedEx wants to keep as much cash (and equity) on hand as possible to look for opportunities to buy assets as cheap as possible and expand as opportunities present themselves.

It is managements job to try and get us to work for free. It is the unions job to max out the pay for the least work possible.

I will only be worried about a furlough coming if the company announces it is closing the HKG domicile, which I don't think will happen. The economy will turn around, eventually, and I think the company wants to be positioned to take advantage of the opportunities to come.
SIBA to HKG is not economically supportable for an entire domicile. Too much lost productivity and a travel bank in the 20k range each month is greater than a Capts yearly salary--shoot, almost up to 380 rates