The legacy carriers also incurred HUGE amounts of debt over the years as well.

And HUGE bailouts from da gubmint!

Very well said in a nutshell. Unfortunately people only see the now and forget other companies that once were on top. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "nothing is going to happen to UPS". I hope not but I'm also not going to hold my breath.

Great reasoning
 

In other words, Don't negotiate a good contract during record profits. .

I didn't say that. I started out by saying "don't call this a concessionary contract". Calling this TA concessionary is a slap in the face to guys who have gotten destroyed by 50% pay cuts, downbids, pension terminations, etc. Can you blame UPS for wanting to compare our contract to those at other pilot groups post 9/11? When times were good, we wanted to be paid like "airline pilots".

Exactly. When pax carrier times are good, the co. doesn't want to compare cargo pilots to pax but the pilots do. When pax carrier times are bad, the co. wants to compare us to pax but the pilots don't. We get mad when the co. wants it both ways, yet we want it both ways as well.

Guys..

The problem is perception and bias. During the teamster fiasco in '98 I actually had a ground manager tell me that ups pilots didn't deserve parity because "we only flew boxes and not passengers." An easy argument to rebut....why did delta pilots make more than airtran...were their pax more valuable?

It's not who or what you fly, it's the revenue generated by the flight. Through good times and bad for the legacy pax carriers, boxes generate more revenue than a plane full of pax. That is what those boxheads have to have drilled into their cardboard craniums.

We (ups/fedex) deserve everything that we negotiate, whether the legacies are doing poorly or doing well.

JMO

Pilot7576

Stuff
 

When I did my interview with UPS last year, my research came up with UPS carrying almost 50% of the cargo market inside the U.S. FedEx came in at 25%, and the other 25% carried by your local operators, ASTAR, etc.

I think there comes a point where a company can get too big for its own good but I don't believe UPS is there yet or will be in the near future. Something drastic would have to happen like China cashing in all the T-bills they own and causing the U.S. economy to tank. THAT would cause a ripple or two.

On another note, while wandering around the UPS ready room last night, the only buttons I saw attached to the shirt lapels of fellow crew members were Vote No buttons. Did not see any vote yes buttons. The final tally will be interesting.

but remember the silent majority.

The big question is how many of them will actually vote no.