Merlin

I may be wrong here but my interpretation of what has been said at the roadshows is that mgmt can't call it retro pay because then they'd have to go back and restate earnings which are lumped under payroll costs [experts can jump in here]. Apparently, listing the same pay as a contract cost is much easier for the bean counters to live with.

TonyC

Both of you are sorta right. Remember Enron? The Company can't give you money and claim they gave it to you last year. Something about The Sarbanes-Oxley Act


Frankly, I don't care what it's called, so long as we're compensated for the amount of time we had to wait. Now, we can argue that it's not as much as it should be, and I would agree. However, as part of a complete package, it's enough, and I'm satisfied. We'll do better next time.



.

KnightFlyer

Yep, who cares what it's called. We're gettin' it. It's pensionable. It counts towards the B fund. We're gettin' interest on the 2nd payout. Life is good.

Pilot7576

Knightflyer...

How do you figure you're getting interest? Because the payment in June is greater than the one at DOS? For a wb cpt, it still totals 30k and I don't see any interest being paid.

JMO

Pilot7576

fly2ski

Would'nt the IRS require us to refile or restate our earnings for the 2 years?
I for one don't want to do that.

FDXer

Originally the final bonus was 90 million. The company wanted to make the second payment in the next fiscal year which starts in June. The nego. committee said okay but you must pay interest, make it pensionable, and pay the money into our B fund. The company said yes and it bumped the 90 million to 95 million plus all the retirement goodies on top. The June number is higher because that's how the negotiating committee divided the extra 5 million. It wouldn't have been 30k without this extra money.

Pilot7576

Fdxer...

So what you're saying is the company wanted to pay 28k total for wb cpt and the extra 2k is interest because it's being paid out in June? I guess you can justify it however you want, but think you guys should have gotten more.

JMO

Pilot7576

TonyC

The Company didn't really care who got what - - they were dealing with one big number, and the method of dividing that sum among crewmembers was a separate matter. They wanted to split it 50/50 over two fiscal years, and ALPA said that would only be fair if the second payment accrued interest.


I agree with you that we should have gotten more. But here's the deal: We got a contract worth north of $800 million dollars. It addresses all four of our cornerstone issues, of which pay rates and retro pay were not. We made huge gains in Scope, Retirement, Health Care, and Work Rules. Each month means $18 million dollars to us. If we snub our noses at this deal because we came up short in retro pay, we'd be lucky to see another TA in less than 9 months. Multiply 9 by $18 million, and that's how much more we'd need just to stay even.


It's kind of like negotiating to buy a house or a car. The day after you close the deal you start second-guessing yourself -- "I should've offered less, they would've taken it." Perhaps so. Maybe we could have gotten more, but I wanna drive this new car while it's still the new model year. I already know I can get a '96 model pretty cheap, but that's not a new car anymore.


If we got everything we wanted, it wouldn't be called negotiating, would it?






.

Beertini

Not that this matters, but that is what I said.

The "Pesky Law Link" I inserted in my previous post takes you to Sarbanes-Oxley.com. The Sarbanes-Oxley law prevents companies from restating previously reported earnings which is why I stated that I was pleased that FedEx wouldn't be known as the next Enron.

I guess I should be more clear.

Beertini

FDXer

I'm not justifying anything. It was explained this way by the negotiating committee. Second payment includes interest. The first payment is 14k for WB captains so the second payment which includes this interest is 16k. The negotiating committee divided up the money and they came up with the interest numbers.