JustUnderPar

You FedEx guys/gals don't have to worry too much. UPS management will be sending plenty of business your way very soon. Should have you all "full time" in the near future.

Our loss. Your gain. You need to start hiring

The Walrus

Sometimes, the truth is hard to swallow.

JustUnderPar

You have no idea.....

Gunter

I find the decision to furlough at Brown disturbing. Even though I think they are playing 'games' to achieve their goals they may take hostages for awhile to enhance the negotiating process for them. Or they might be just plain mean. Whatever their plan it's unethical because you have been providing them with the savings they have been asking from you. I wonder why I haven't seen that part in the news.

Do you have some guys who are flying 100 hrs a month or more? How does that work over there?

Busboy

Wow! That's really strange. It's almost as if I type something on my keyboard...And, something completely different comes up on your screen.

Let me ask you something...When you watch Sportscenter, do you see unicorns and dancing water buffalo?

OK, I give up...You're right. I guess our most junior guys are NOT fortunate to be getting a paycheck because we have 4A2b. Without it...Our benevolent management team would not have attempted to lower costs in some other manner. They would have just continued to buy up lines indefinitely.

SaltyDog

Gunter,
UPS will stuff our lines to cover the flying. Our MEC ('Executive Board') has instituted contractual language that allows the union to publicly call for an open time and junior assignment ban. So we will see high 80's and 90+ hour lines on our schedules. They will be contractually stuffed. This causes it's own set of management challenges. (But we have a seperate airline pilot group that only have FAR's for job rules)
Our junior 300 are very seasoned airline crews. They soundly and vocally call for "no concessions" which is the real aim of UPS. The IPA offered furlough mitigation and savings. We had that but UPS really wanted that plus a new, concessionary contract starting point for our next round of openers in 2012.
An IPA concessionary start would provide hundreds of millions in savings for UPS over the term of the next contract, not just current savings. What they are really accomplishing: IPA soundly rejecting a concession on the contract and causing the IPA to get unified and unique opportunites to take care of our own. Business has stabilized at FedEx and UPS. Volumes are not dropping, our original cadre of 60+ will be retired in next 2 years.

UPS must battle the FedEx market leverage of your intact pilot force that your sales force will no doubt exploit;
"Sure you still want to stay with UPS? They furloughed pilots and are causing labor problems, did we mention that the UPS mechanics are sill in contract talks? We see service challenges as they mismanage their labor force. We are ideally positioned to support your business, and did we tell you of the reduced transit times with our new 777?"
UPS: Stooping to collect pennies, instead of walking over to the dime jar.

FlynLow

In my humble opinion...

I went to dinner last August in DC with 10 other cargo pilots at a conference I was attending. 9 of them were unemployed or about to be furloughed. i dared not whine about 4.a.2.b.

BUT...I'm not happy about 4.a.2.b. In fact I'm angry and ****ed off. I feel management wanted to use it for cost cutting and not to keep people from being furloughed. Fedex would have cut 500 pilots in a heartbeat if they could have done it on the cheap. They had no problem doing it in other parts of the corporation.

Management has taken advantage of the wording to try and do what they want to do. Funny thing is they didn't save any money. Revenue from union dues is roughly the same, which means they paid out the same money for flying. I would even say they did more flying, as reserve utilization was WAY up and they still had to pay a ton of draft and other flying...junior guys got worked harder, paid less due to the RLG being less, but days worked being the same. Senior guys and those lucky draft people got to fly carryover and still have big BLG's...(I had a senior school house flex guy TWICE on draft in my right seat over XMAS...big bucks, while I'm getting my reduced RLG...such is life)

Then if you throw in the excess, the guys being paid to sit around and mow their lawns, the house buys, the moves, the training cycles....management didn't do a good job with managing their resoucrces.

Bottom line is they didn't share the pain amongst everyone, they did what they thought would best meet their needs. Fly now grieve later.....and so the legal continues.

Despite the pay cut I've taken, and my upcoming excess to a lower paying seat, I consider myself lucky. I have a good job, still making very good money, and even though my schedules suck, they are better than my legacy brethern whose Captains are making less than our FO's do. (all this in spite of my managements waste of money with regards to manning that was demonstrated earlier in my post) We are lucky, but I also want my company to respect and uphold the contract like they do with us on our end.

I think what management did on this is wrong, but business is business. They want us to work for nothing, and we want to work only every other Wednesday in a leap year.

It does come down to just being business.(but I also take it as a personal lack of respect for us as a group...but that is just me)

So what I'm I going to do?

I suggest we support our leadership and stayed informed.

Remember this crap when it comes down to the nut-cutting during contract negotiations and support what your negotiations chairman and SPC ask for.

I have a long memory...I won't be working hard this year...enjoying my days off and trying to make up for lost time with my family.

FDX1

Very well put...wish everyone had this picture!

Busboy

Let me try this:

I believe that management has violated the intent of 4A2b in three ways:

1) They invoked 4A2b when they were in no position to furlough.

2) They are violating 4A2b, by not spreading the pain evenly amongst the different aircraft.

3) They have lowered the number of reserve lines, spreading the available flying into more lines, to further lower BLGs.

Of course it's all about lowering costs. That's the benefit to 4A2b for management. In return, we get no furloughs. My problem with 4A2b, is what I wrote above. It's how they are doing it. Whether all of this has actually saved them any money or not is debatable. But, I would think after doing the same thing for a year or so...It probably is.

On the other hand...If we did not have 4A2b in our contract. Or, if management had to position the list for a furlough before invoking 4A2b, then spread the BLGs evenly, etc. Would they use it as their cost cutting measure, or just furlough? I think they'd do whatever the bean counters told them would save more money. That could put us in the same position that the UPS pilots have found themselves.

We'll probably never know. But I'm sure that if I was on the bottom at FDX...I'd feel fortunate that 4A2b is in our contract and I'm still getting a paycheck.

FreightDawgyDog

I think there is a simpler explanation here. Some in management wanted to allow over 60 S/O's to come back to the left seat of WB aircraft after the age change. Without any thought to how it might affect staffing during an already down period on our earnings, they did this by canceling an already awarded bid and then running excess bids off the back of the 727 and DC10 when there were no primary awards needed in the other seats. Then, when the flying in some aircraft had to be spread out, lines were being built to under 68 BLG due to this over-staffing of the most expensive seats from the cheapest seats. More and more lines had to be bought up to the 68 BLG min (as agreed to in the contract) every month. I believe the extra cost was about 1 million per month. The pressure above our managers was squarely on them to justify this when FedEx was already making less profits then they liked. Their answer was to stop buying up the lines by an inappropriate use of 4a2b. You are correct that they have probably spent more money in doing this (via excesses causing needless training and move packages) then had they kept buying up lines. All the beancounters were looking at was the paying of pilots for 68 hours when they were only working 60 to 65 so they didn't really look beyond the initial savings IMO. Our managers looked good to their superiors by sticking it to the pilots and the union by instituting 4a2b and stopping the BLG buy ups.

As far as the union dues not dropping due to 4a2b that makes sense as well. The flying is still being done by those protecting carry over and taking draft and volunteer, as well as the fact that some bidpack BLG's are at historic highs while others are historic lows. If only we could all accept 4a2b for one month and live by those BLG's the questions to our managers from above would change drastically from BLG buy-ups to explaining all the service failures and total loss of revenue to the company it caused. Heck, even 2 weeks might be enough to make big changes happen very quickly. 2 guys who never got it are leaving next month. If no one takes over their 120 BLG paying lines it would be a great start to getting rid of 4a2b.

The true cost of 4a2b can be seen in the loss of pilot goodwill towards doing anything above and beyond the minimum their job requires. Just look at the fuel sense program. If you have been to RGS lately you have heard them bemoaning the fact that our delayed start numbers are way down. Anyone wonder when it started to drop off? My guess is the downward spike of delayed start usage declined quickly with the start of 4a2b. It will take something extraordinary to get that goodwill back IMO.

As contract openers get closer it will do this pilot group well to remember that right after saving the company 200 million in fuels savings, management started 4a2b to cover their staffing errors. Yes, the BLG's are creeping slowly upward and hurting a little less but don't let that distract you. Even if it is repealed, we need to remember that it was done. It's just good business on our part.

Sorry for the long post. I think it is important we keep 4a2b in perspective. I truly believe it was not about furlough protection as much as it was a face saving maneuver for stopping BLG buy-ups at our expense. Your mileage may vary though. ..