av8rmike

Let's pretend you own a trucking firm with 600 employees. Half are truckers, half are clerical/sales/warehouse/maintenance personnel. Times get hard and volume goes down by a third. I only need 200 truckers, but still need almost all the other people to run the company.

I can get rid of 100 truck drivers, or I could keep all of them and drop their pay by a third to keep their relative cost to the company the same. I could cut the pay similarly for the other employees, but I need all of them to continue to run the company. They are a fixed cost, the truckers are a variable cost.

Everyone calling for all FedEx employees to share a 20-30% pay cut (shared sacrifice) don't seem to get the above. Volume is WAAAY down. They do not need all of us at present. The options allowed by the contract are to cut hours or F-word. Regardless of your interpretation of the 'implied' language of the contract, they are going to pay relative to volume and manning. I hate to say it, but like so many previous examples, if it ain't spelled out, we lose. Heck, we lose on occasion when it is spelled out.

I'm not looking forward to the paycheck hickeys that are coming, but I've still got a paycheck, medical benefits for me and my family, retirement accruing and a company that seems to be willing to keep me around rather than putting me on the street. Talk about increasing costs to the company (APU use,etc) and negatively impacting reliability is moronic and self-destructive. I'll limbo really, really low to keep us all on property.

hamfisted

Talk about taking 25-35% of one category of employees' wages(violating a SIGNED contract) while taking less than 10% for most other employees while still making billions of dollars in profits sounds moronic to me.

MajorKong

av8rmike, why don't we just chop the head off of the egg laying chicken. If they want cuts, why don't they cut the 95% that are not laying the eggs? You are the typical example of the hysteria that they like to create to solve the problem. You are willing to lay down and take it in the a$$ before you even need to. You and Pablo ARE the problem to the entire pilot group.

Haywood JB

I think that all of the bottom 700+, myself included, are thankful.

Haywood.

av8rmike

How are they violating the contract? I would love to know, because you and I together can go over to Kirby and initiate the grievance.

nakazawa

Volume might be down, but you still need to make all the stops. Your example would be good if all the trucks were going in the same direction to the same destinations. In our case, we still need the stop in Cedar Rapids, as well as in Tampa - and the same truck can't make both stops - or in our case, the jets can't make both stops and still provide our absolutely positively service. We've already 'tweaked' the schedules with the optimizer causing the shorter and lighter loads to be covered by fewer jets and fewer crews. The trouble is - especially internationally - one hiccup can cost millions. And if you don't think we're having hiccups - take a look at the number of MD-11 standby crews at our international locations.

hamfisted

I must have mis-read the Union's message stating that reducing the BLG's as they propose is violating the contract. No need for you and I to go to Kirby. I would expect OUR Union to file the grievance for us if they implement the cuts as proposed. You know.....the ones you say you would be willing to take without a fight.

PastV1

Yea, but we may not need to go CID-MEM AND CID-IND..... Same applies to TPA and our other cities that have two outbounds to two dif sort facilities....

Haywood JB

I think what he is referring to is the vagueness of our contract. The company is picking and choosing how to employ the blg reductions instead of doing it across the board. If the DC-10 goes to 48 and the MD11 stays close to 68(or more in ANC), then how is this fair.

I guess one could say that in the looking glass we should bid what we want, but a top Fortune 500 company, one would think, would have thought of contingencies for aircraft transitions and lack of productivity as they park and replace planes. Some PHD in the company has had to made some calculation along those lines on how to do this efficiently...

Anyway, I am back to my light switch...I replaced the old one with a dimmer...it's twisty!

av8rmike

I addressed this in my first post. The Association in putting out that the 'intent' was not to lower lines below 68 hours unevenly. Have you read that section of the contract? I have and it doesn't say anything of the sort. When contract language is ambiguous, do we normally win?

One other thought, bad in the good ol' days, when the 727 BLG was 72 and the MD-11 was 75, who complained? Unequal, but ok. Going downhill, unequal isn't ok? I WISH our contract had unambiguous language in this section saying below 68 hours, all tracks will match, but it doesn't.