FedEx "B" Scale
 

So who else on the 727 is tired of seeing the growing trend we knew was coming?

As they shift the workforce around, the 727 is effectively becoming a B scale as every other fleet is back to near normal BLG or above.

This is ridiculous, I say we have to say no more. Otherwise, by mid-year, every other fleet will be making 75+ hours while we scrap by on 55. That aint sharing the pain, it's a B scale for the most junior pilots.

Dude ... I'm not sure why you believe you are the only one feeling the pain (maybe they're just picking on you?)?

I just read the SIG update that arrived in my email inbox a half hour ago. My (11MEMCA) RLG next month is only 62 hrs!*? Maybe you should read it. I agree that the pain is not evenly spread but there are lots of us taking it up the 4a2b!

Yes, reading it would be good. Some of what it says--

MD 11 CA MEM is at a 65 hr average and rising every month. 727 CA and SO at 60 hrs.

Your RLG, as a percentage of the line average, is proportionately higher.

OR told us the plan was to put all the extra pilots in the 727.

B scale it is and will be until an arbitrator rules otherwise.

The 727 has been hit the hardest and their crews have suffered the largest financial hit percentage-wise of any other fleet. That's a fact. The disproportionate sacrifice they have suffered is criminal. Their pay has become what amounts to a B scale. You need to step back and look at this in perspective. Though your RLG as an MD CA may be 62 hours, you're making somewhere around $230/hour. There are junior S/Os making barley $100/hour at 55+ hours a month. Your financial hit, though painful to you, doesn't even come close to what a 727 S/O is feeling. There are 200 S/Os that would love to trade places with you in a second. Relax, have a drink and stop complaining about how rough you have it while you're fortunate enough to be in the upper tier of the pay-scale.

You left out the part about being fortunate to be getting a paycheck.:confused:

We're still so overmanned that today I was launched, off of MD11 CAP B reserve, on a 4 day trip, DH to STN to operate back RF2 relief pilot!:confused:

The only good I can report about this, other than my leveling, is that the Makers in the O'Hare Flagship lounge is hitting the spot! :cool: Hope I can remember how to do a walk-around, sort the catering and count the pillows and blankets!:rolleyes:

BTW - this was a VTO line converted to Reserve while blowing off my number request for days off!

You're right. There are 300 UPS pilots who are going to be furloughed and who will soon receive no paychecks at all. A buddy of mine there told me his furlough notice was mailed two days ago. He has nowhere else to go... at least as far as a flying jobs go.

Did you vote yes on the contract. I believe it had a clause which most believed to be a share the pain clause. You must have missed that part.

You must be one of the two guys who stood up at the union meeting advocating for a furlough.

Really? You got all that from my post?

That's simply amazing.

It really is ain't it?

Yes I did. Quite simply, every time someone points out that the company isn't following the intent of the contract and is paying the junior guys well below (in hours) what all the others are getting, someone has to pipe up with the obligatory "you should be lucky to have a job" comment.

There is no doubt we all feel lucky to be at FedEx. However with contract negotiations coming up, how do you intend to build any unity with comments like yours. Thrust me the junior folks aren't following the Pied Piper anymore.

That you Freud?
 

I sure hope you meant to say "trust." Otherwise, this 4a2b thing is having some very adverse effects on your lifestyle. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

That is not true either, there are MANY senior people in the 727, in ALL seats that are getting the B scale shaft. The idea of shared sacrifice is noble, just not what is transpiring.

The real question is how much would average blg been if "This month, the ATL, CVG & SMF HSTBY’s should be available for the Secondary Lines." had been added to the bid pack these last 4 months?

Don't get me wrong, I am glad they will be going to someone besides the open time um, um, um, "hawks". But that is a lot of hours that should have been included in avg blg.

SIG notes says we have 7700 hrs in the 727 for March. Has it changed the last 6 months? I doubt it's gone up any.

41 hrs X 3 pairings X 4 weeks = 492 hrs.


Looks like a 6.3% increase in the line average.

Delete Delete

Absolutely.

This is hopefully just the first step to having all this flying in the bidpack.

Small step, but progress none the less.

I'm not exactly sure what your problem is...I believe that our most junior crewmembers are fortunate to be getting a paycheck. Look around the industry. It's a fact. They are fortunate that our contract has 4A2b. Don't read any more into it, than that.

So, you think the company is being unfair to guys by not spreading out the BLGs evenly, right? Me too. The only problem with our thinking is that if the company was forced to artificially raise the 727 BLGs(buy up)...Don't you think that would put another log on the furlough fire?

I'm not so sure that our most junior crewmembers should be hoping we win the 4A2b greivance. Maybe by the time the arbitrator makes a ruling...There will be enough flying(in the bidpack) that it doesn't matter, anymore.

And as far as "thrusting" you. There isn't enough tequila in the world. Sorry.

You want to talk about unity? What does "the junior folks are not going to follow the Pied Piper anymore" mean? Who is the Pied Piper? Your block rep? The SPC? The MEC? What, are the junior guys going to be independent contractors?

Busboy,

What I'm hearing is you're quite satisfied the line averages on the MD11 and Bus have gone up considerably (Don't even mention the 777 and 757) but could care less about the bottom feeder 727 guys. That's some unity.

I feel so lucky to be here that I think we should give you a pay raise and dock everyone junior to you to pay for it. But wait, we're kinda doing that already.

You guys rock!

[QUOTE=I believe that our most junior crewmembers are fortunate to be getting a paycheck. Look around the industry. It's a fact. They are fortunate that our contract has 4A2b.[/QUOTE]

Busboy,

Words fail me.

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:D

Sometimes, the truth is hard to swallow.

You have no idea.....

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?

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.:confused:

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.

In my humble opinion
 

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.

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

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.

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. ..

I think Freight is spot on with his analysis

You ask who the Pied Piper is; it's ALPA both national and local. Quite frankly ALPA is leading us off a cliff. We are heading into contract negotiations with the most fractured pilot group probably in the history of airline unions.

How did we get here? By basically pitting the junior against the senior crew members. Most will say it was the company who did this, but I disagree.

Lets first look at our last contract for all the hidden money, it's all located in the MD-11 international flying. How about Trip Rig, increasing it was a good thing, to bad very few of the narrow body aircraft fly Trip Rig. The list goes on and we've all seen the discussions. Bottom line, the last contract benefited one group.

Now I'll through in age 65. Need I say more, we know who that benefited. Then the excess out of the 727 SO. Anyone who believes ALPA didn't have a part in all this in smoking crack.

Then there is the current excess. ALPA made all these under the table deals as to how this would work. Too bad we can't get the details of all the deals, but we do know there are lots of guys entitled to passover pay who aren't getting it due to some special deal.

Now we have a situation where all anyone is asking, is for the company to follow the contract (which they clearly aren't) and when someone points this out we get the "you should feel lucky to be getting a paycheck" comment. This statement is about as divisive as any I can think of. It basically says "shut up and color we know what's best for you". Well based on what I laid out at the beginning of this post, I'm not convinced ALPA is working in our collective best interest.

So how do we get the unity back. Lets see some leadership from the TOP. And by top I mean the top of the seniority list. There are lots of ways this could occur, I'll just throw out one example; protect min days off. I'm sure there are lots of other good examples.

Until we start seeing some leadership from above, someone please explain to me what the benifit in following these guys is.

Leadership from the TOP is what you're looking for, eh? You mean, the top of each seat's seniority list, right?

It never ceases to amaze me, who some of you guys decide to throw spears at. And, who gets a pass. You talk as though the only people flying carryover, draft, volunteer, etc. are senior widebody capts. Or, the only people that fly TAFB trips, or int'l MD-11 trips benefitting from those upgrades to our contract, are senior widebody capts. Well, I've got news for you friend...Almost the entire spectrum of our seniority list is represented by such people. Many of those people are what we call F/Os.

I don't think we should be flying extra right now, either. But, nearly every time I go to work, I fly with guys who don't agree me. And believe me, they're not at the top of our seniority list.

So, if it's unity you want...You might want to think about that. Your "the guys at the TOP of our seniority list are ruining my life" frame of mind is about as divisive as I've seen.

And, if my thinking that the bottom of our list is "fortunate" to be getting a paycheck...Sorry. Maybe this would sound better? I think that the bottom of the seniority list at FDX is fortunate to be getting a paycheck, and I'm glad that they are still here.

As far as your feelings about ALPA...You do know that the vote from the bottom guy on our list is just as powerful as the vote from the guy on the top of the list? That the vote of your block rep is just as important as the vote from the Block 1 rep, right?

Just so all are aware... My MEM11CA VTO paid 59.5 hrs.... Gota love it!

Same for the other seat, below RLG....

Thread title?
 

Just for discussion purposes ... "FDX B scale" makes me think that many of you have never worked at an operation that had a real "B scale." Don't get me wrong, I believe the company is 4a2b-ing us inappropriately but ... just saying that you're still not plumbing for $40/hr like some of us did in the good old B scale days :eek:

So you are saying a 20% paycut is not similar to a B scale?

Don't get me wrong ... I think my 25% hour cut is a very real cut but until you've worked for $40/hr (as a 727f/o, 727s/o, 747 s/o) you really don't now what a real B scale is ...

(I won't comment on this subject again ... I promise)

Working less and getting paid less isn't great. However, it is much better than working the same or more for less $.

I get it. A CA paycut should result in a larger paycut for others.

I find it hard to believe your last month was a 25% pay cut. Soon your hours will be almost normal.

What about everyone else? Who cares.