CR,

Great first posting. I tried to hint much of the same in a different thread but you said it much better than I did. A furlough can be a truly life changing experience for numerous reasons. Like you said so well, the loss of income and insurance is a scary place to find oneself in the current economy.

I was lucky when it happened to me. I had a working wife that made a decent living, I was still in the Reserves (pretty good part time income, including extended periods of Active Duty) and I knew I had marketable job skills (I was able to quickly find a job as a Flight Test Engineer). I would venture that many on the bottom of the seniority list might never of had a job outside of flying.

Because FedEx has never furloughed, it's very much an abstract concept here. I'll bet UAL has an entirely different perspective than we do? Because we've never furloughed I'm concerned about gray areas (maybe unaddressed holes?) in our contract that have not been well thought out simply because nobody ever thought we'd find ourselves in this situation. In fact, I recently ran into BC in the AOC and asked him how the mushy language in CBA section 4.a.2.b was able to get by our negotiating committee? His response was, "We knew what it said, we didn't like it, we never thought we would be in this situation, and we had bigger issues to concern ourselves with." Well ... at least that was an honest answer. What other issues have management and the union never even thought of? Do you trust management will do "the right thing" just because it's the right thing to do?

I think DW was a furlough refugee and I know that the new NC chairman was furloughed so maybe our union leadership will be proactive concerning furlough issues but will the company even engage? Will they do a single thing not required by the contract? Will they do the required things in this cost cutting environment?

I think we're in for a difficult next 12-24 months unless the economy does some sort of amazing turn-around. A recession is when your friend loses their job, a depression is when you lose your job.


Mark