Man don't put "DP flyers" in with all the other contractual benefits in our contract. The union says don't fly DP, and 99.99% don't. Different animal.
like I said most are conservative except when it comes to this job and then we get a lot of bleeding heart junior liberals.
If we acted in unison our last contract negotiations would have been settled in a month... it just won't happen here. We are about to prove it again... just wait and see.

Just my 2 cents.
4a2b is a very noble position that no one thought would be implemented. There is no way we could have foreseen the retirement age change combined with the company's foolish decision to favor some of the "senior" mgt buds by cancelling a bid in order to allow them to bid back to window seats at higher rates of pay. Then, to add a bit of salt to the wound, the economy imploded.

shipping volumes dropped, and here we are with a bunch of the crew dawgs at the top of the Capt pay chart versus the top of the SO pay chart.....exacerbating the precipitous drop of revenue resulting from the global implosion of the financial market.

Keep in mind, barring the one time charges of us giving back some planes, FedEx made $$. True, not as much as we thought we were going to make when the company cancelled the bid to get their "boys" back into window seats. But we made money. Some slick goombah pointed out that there are no trigger events, shared sacrifice, financial indicators in 4a2b and that if the company implemented 4a2b a bit more money could be made.
Bottom line is the company did it because they could. Only goal words in 4a2b, no 4a2b only implemented when dividend rate cut in half or suspended, no 4a2b only implemented in survival mode when other employee groups pay cut commensurate with that of 4a2b. No trigger events for when to exit 4a2b.

After learning a bit more about arbitration in our business, IMO, the arbitrator is stalling in hopes that we settle because he doesn't want to rock the boat huge in hopes of future business from the company. That being said, I think it is unlikely that we will recoup all of our back pay. Beginning to think the best we might get is having 4a2b eliminated from the contract. Perfect world would be an expansion of 4a2b to include some of the shared sacrifice verbiage that's been bandied about here.

Which leads me to C/O. I think it would be great if C/O was capped during 4a2b, but it's not. I think it would be great if everyone protected min days off, but the 1 or 2 day C/O trips I've wound up with over the past year or so don't trigger min days off and aren't dropped.

IMO C/O makes the company financially stronger. The guys it really hurts are those sitting in the pool, but that has been the norm for FedEx throughout most of our flying history. Because the company is financially stronger, it benefits me, eventually. As we move towards negotiating our next contract, how strong is the company's likely position that they're paying too much for pilots given the market rate of pilot salaries in the US? How can you be paying us too much when even during the worst economy in decades, FedEx made money? And part of the reason we made money is C/O, guys trading up their schedules, and the change in the make up window. Pretty much every day there are 3-5 trips that would have been assigned to a reserve guy in our previous contract, and most of those trips are gone by the time the assignment window opens up. IMO, the elimination of the 48 hour window is one of the main reasons the company has reduced the reserve manning levels which allows them to spread the flying across more bodies which makes their 4a2b argument stronger.

As far as the pension goes, far as I'm concerned my pension is maxed out now at the FO level. Anything I make beyond it is gravy. Assuming there's still a pension when I retire of course. No guarantees out there that some future economic storm isn't going to result in FedEx handing the pension off to the PBGCC. IF that happens, something I believe to be highly unlikely, those guys working 75% of the month are going to be much more PO'd than I am.
Even beyond that, how hard do you want to work to complicate your taxes. No crystal ball here, but it's starting to look like I'm going to be working even less than I do now assuming I'm fortunate enough to upgrade to Capt in the next few years.

Don't try and stop him, he's on a roll. Kinda like John Belushi in "1941"

"Did we quit when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No!"


Did he mention he's 50 from the bottom and can feel your pain yet?

1941???????????

Okay, you're on movie quote probation. Go watch Caddyshack, Fletch, maybe Airplane and DEFINITELY........... ANIMAL HOUSE, and try again tomorrow. Sheeesh......

Stripes too........"we zip in....we zip out....it's like going in to Wisconsin".

For the record......1941 is a great film, easily eclipsing the cinematic prowess of Spies Like US......."open bomb-bay doors!"

Thats way different than I heard. I heard if we shut the heck up and do our frappin jobs we will have peace in our time, universal healthcare and Tom Cruise will never do another movie.

Uh, you misspelled "70"! Just saying (since I'm more than 50 and your senior to me).

Well, I'll have to admit I've never checked my position, but since I can't hold a line or trips on VTO I just took a guess. My position here sucks, but as you pointed out your is worse hahaha!

Meeting AA in STN tonight, it just might get ugly in jolly ole England! I heard a rumor he will drink some beer.

I like everything you said except for this last point. People say stuff like this all the time "if my pension's there", "if Fedex doesn't get rid of my pension" etc. A lot of misnomers out there. Great article on this website, APC a few months ago written by a UPS guy (let's hire him for our R&I) about DB plans. The company can't just get rid of the pension. There are very specific laws in place to prevent this. The only way the DB plan goes away (you can't even negotiated it away for those already vested - it is a vested, court backed benefit) is if the company declares bankruptcy or they liquidate the plan and give out the proceeds - like Delta did. That might not be so bad - as long as the pension fund stays funded you'd probably end up with more money than you would have had you invested it in a 401K by yourself.

So that's it. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there's anyway the company can get rid of it - nor can we negotiate it's removal for the vested members in the next contract. Yes, you could cap it, but if I've got 10 years of vested DB benefits, then those can only go away in the two scenarios mentioned above.

My uncle was a United pilot.

He had a better contract than the one we've got now. Probably felt more comfortable about his company's security than you do now. They were the largest airline in the world, back in the nineties.

Then he lost his pension and now gets about 35k a year from the PBGC.

It would require a trip to bankruptcy court, but trust me, it could happen. Fred ain't going to be around forever.