Correct me if I am wrong but in HKG it is against the law to not send your kids to school?

 

Homeschooling is illegal for Chinese nationals in HKG.

Expats do it, but they are not officially supposed to.

 

That is what I thought. So pay your 25 grand per kid. That hurts.

 

This post needs to be on every LOA 2.0 thread.




Originally Posted by jousteagle
An E-1 gets $6,037 per month for rent + $571 per month for utilities.
An O-5 gets $ 6,746 per month for rent + $571 per month for utilities.
An E-1 gets $22.73 per day for COLA
An O-5 gets $47.05 per day for COLA

Yes, these figures are in US dollars!

Should be an easy way to negotiate. Use an independent organization (the DOD) to set housing and COLA figures. The figures fluxuate with the exchange rate. You could do the same should CDG get back in the picture.

Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA) Query
Overseas Cost of Living Allowance Query

Good luck with your negotiations!

Joust

 

You are correct, home schooling for children ages 6 through 15 is illegal in HKG, and this includes Expats.

International home education regulations

I wonder how BC would feel about his "I pay for my kids schooling, so HKG guys should have to as well!"

Looks like he did a lot of research on HKG schooling laws. What a great negotiator.

 

Well if you "have a whole passel of kids you should not bid it."

 

Sorry to butt in but here is where I throw in my "FedEx is acting like a small company" rant.

Every other airline has people based all over the place, and juniority rules the roost.

SWA= OAK
AAL= S80 LGA or STL
NWA= DTW
CAL = 737 EWR or 737 GUM
DAL= JFK for now

I don't know where junior UAL guys are now.

But I can assure you the the most junior guys at those airlines are in the most junior positions. That is not by accident.

I've been saying this for years - FedEx needs to move away from this Giant Bid system that creates a huge training letter and do a monthly Standing Bid.

Just make it so your Standing Bid get runs every month - if you can hold Captain on XXX or Widebody FO on XX, then you go to training next month. The number of positions available depends on how many bodies they need in your seat next month.

The company wins - they can dial down or dial up training on a month by month basis rather than relying on a ginormous bid that involve 1,000 pilots. The pilots win as well because you can determine when you want to go to training (for the most part). Don't want to start in summer? Pull that bid and put it back in in Sep, to start in Oct.

Seriously - I think a lot of guys avoid training at FedEx because they end up on a Training Letter that voids their vacation, sick time and everything else for several months at a time.

If the company ran a bid every month, for the slots available next month and going forward I think we would see less chaos overall and after a year or so the seniority would settle down as well. The beauty is that if things turn around quickly the company is not tied down to a long training letter and can ramp things up in the positions it NEEDS, not the ones it THOUGHT IT NEEDED.

I haven't looked at the contract, but after the last (canceled) bid turned our non-flush system into a de-facto flush system, I'm sure the company can do whatever they want with the bids.

 

The school I looked at was $95,000 HK for tuition. About $12,200 US. Add typical expenses of $30-60 per week per child depending on extracurricular activities. About $15,350 per year. My friend looked at another school that was around $140,000 HK tuition. That would put it around $21,000 US with expenses. I believe that was the most expensive one he looked at.
BTW, public shcool expenses in the US run me $30 per week per child.

 

I expect to get skewered from a lot of sides for saying some of this, but whatever. If the membership in general and the people against this LOA want to get what they want, they need to grow the F up, learn the system/game and learn how to play it. Otherwise, go back in your holes and shut the F up. If the MEC/MC want to get respect for what they say,then learn how to communicate often, openly and effectively-introducing the daily update, a staple of MEC's across the country. This will likely come off as a 'know-it-all' statement which will go over like a lead turd in the super-charged type-A personality world of FedEx, but it's not meant that way.

We have a membership that is rightfully fed up with the recent events and actions of the MEC and MC, which casts doubt on a few provisions of this LOA. However, there is no action behind those words. No matter how you slice up the primary issues with the FDA LOA they come down to trust of the MEC and MC. Many are quick to jump up and point out that they feel that these parties do not deserve this trust which I certainly respect as that feeling has been prevalent for over a year now. However what is being done about it? As a group we are intelligent, but we display an woeful lack of understanding of how ALPA politics and negotiations work. I get tired of going to work and seeing good unionists excited because people aren't wearing their lanyards because they feel that will get ALPA to notice their frustration. Or that if they vote no, confidently predicting it'll force DW and the MEC to resign. Those things show incredible lack of knowledge of how the system they oppose works, nor the fact that they are only showing signs to the company, not ALPA. I understand and agree with the frustration, I just don't understand why as a group we don't take those lessons and learn how to get what we want vs. the indignant b!tch sessions.

This stuff is politics, period. It is today, it will be the next day and the day after that, no matter what your rep says publicly or how you individually feel it should be. If you want to beat it, you have to play the game and play it smartly. This is no different than what I was saying a year ago when people were trying to figure out how to recall DW. Paragraph's G and N of this LOA are about trust of the MC and MEC period and we by and large have the same people complaining about them now as we did complaining about LOA 1 and the Age 65 deal survey prior to that. However, one year and a lot of complaining later, there has been no action to discover which MEC members represent the biggest obstacles to the desired change, nor a concerted and well-thought out effort to recall these individuals and replace them not only with people who will fight for what the membership wants, but people who can get along and agree on a suitable candidate for the MC position. (hint, hint it won't be read about on APC, the ALPA forums, nor any kind of e-mail that could get loose if people are serious about getting it done).

If the membership isn't serious about getting something like this done, then voting down an LOA that provides benefits without concessions over lack of trust in the MEC is stupid. These people will still be there the day after a no vote. They aren't resigning, nor do they give any indication that a no vote will change their actions(it likely won't imo). If you're not willing to see the reason why you voted no through with action, then why bother denying people who want the benefits the LOA? It's time for us to show a little savvy here one way or the other. Either take the incremental benefit in the face of ugly conditions, or vote it down and make a real effort to get some change on the MEC. They won't resign or go away no matter how many no votes you put out, PAC contributions you stop, Dues checkoffs you stop, lanyard's you remove or anything else. It's been tried by many a property before us and will be tried again, and in the end only getting hands dirty and pulling off a recall/electing new blood that was cohesive of purpose has ever been successful.

Personally, I'm conflicted on the MEC as I was a year ago when this stuff came up. I don't agree with many of their actions, but by the nature of our system it's tough to see who should go. Most of us, like myself, do not live in Memphis and do not get to attend meetings. Communications from the union are sparse and save a few guys here so is forum participation. As a result, without some help from the locals who do get to see these guys in action at the monthly meetings, etc it's hard to know who is good and who isn't much less who should replace them and who would be a good MC candidate that the majority of the MEC would get behind solidly. Based on history, recalling and replacing people in the blind is often more dangerous than the status quo hence my conflict on what I think we should do.

I know this whole diatribe boils down to the oft heard 'get involved' phrase but it is what we need. We are going about what we want the wrong way, and may unintentionally end up hurting our own members if we don't start to act smarter. It's easy to say 'my price is higher and it's your own fault for going to the FDA,' but if you feel that way what are you going to do to get that price? Is that price realistically attainable now after we already voted in the LOA, the base is operating, the company is overstaffed, and contract negotiations not far off, and a MEC that clearly feels that there isn't more they can do? If the answer is yes, again let's go and get the new people, if it's no then suck up the frustration up and make the best vote politically at this stage-chess not checkers. I haven't decided on my vote(I'm generally springloaded to NO), but since I haven't decided on what I think should be done with the MEC, I won't be voting NO solely because of that either because it's just not logical given the game we're playing. It just seems to me that right now we're really making fools of ourselves on both sides: membership and MEC. I've stayed out it so far and probably shouldn't have written this, but oh well.

 

Well, I stayed out of it for a while and thought maybe I shouldn't have started the thread, but separate the wheat from the chaff and there's been a lot of good dialogue in this thread, so I'm glad I did it-sorta.

That said, I think Dan makes a lot of good points, but keep in mind, we need to vote this thing up or down based on its merits alone, not based on what we think about the MEC or MC or what we think they'll do or what the company might do or not do upon either outcome.

As time has passed since originally posting this, I have grown much less concerned about N. and a lot more concerned about G.2. I'm still baffled as to why N was included, but I no longer view it as much of factor in my decision.

I now find the decision rooted simply in whether all those improvements for moving to-from the FDA are worth the potential implications of G.2. Is writing a bigger check to get there and passing on a full section 6 move with 79 CH upon return worth stopping G.2? Maybe. But I gotta be honest, I'm torn.

That's a lotta jack, but it really only applies moving in and moving out. For a guy there for the long-haul (and that's probably the entire lower half of both seats), the price of moving there is probably quickly forgotten after umpty-squat # of train deadheads if they turn out to be arduous. What sort of oversight by the SIG will there be on this? Could they get away with revoking the agreement to public transport out of HKG? Could they get away with never approving it at all? G.2. doesn't authorize public transport. It authorizes the SIG approval authority of it. Fat chance that they'd say no to the train from HKG-CAN, but it's a thought. I do hope they are forward-thinking enough to only approve it for trains that have premium seating (it's not as nice as it sounds, but hey, they should place limits on their approval, just as there should have been limits placed on the original G/T waiver).

Anyway, I think I can trust the SIG to keep from putting guys on a goat truck to the market, but giving the company the ability to GT on the train really does essentially remove options from the traveling pilot rather than add to them. (So at least I removed that much of my head out of my arse).

So for me it now really boils down to how much I'm willing to give up to avoid a compulsory train ride (or hydrofoil????). It's a train ride I'll probably take anyway, but if the same day were scheduled in a car or plane, that train would be saving me time and maybe bank. How many years of doing that would make it worth what I would have given up to give me that choice. Is it really that big of a difference? I suppose it depends on how long you are in the FDA.

I still don't find it to be as easy of a choice as most others here, but I'm to the point where I can't ask anyone to vote either way. Especially when there are MD-11 and SIBA folks out there who could be affected negatively by this who wouldn't see a dime of the relocation $$$. If there were one, single day-to-day work rules type of improvement in this, or maybe rent increase or something that would actually affect the FDA'er more than just when they go to or leave the FDA, it would be an easier choice, but the only item in there that could have any daily significance is G.2. That's a concern. But again, that's a lot of jack to **** away when I'll probably be on that choo-choo anyway (I doubt we'll see Rebecca De Mornay aboard).

The opinions I get from the people going to Hong Kong vary from strenous support to adamantly opposed, so if you were on the fence, that oughta help you some.

Anyway, please try to take only the FDA Amendment into the voting booth with you and leave any feelings of LOA1, Age 65, MC compensation, facial hair, etc. behind.