FDX - training trade
 

Got a bit of a philosophical scrap going on

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1114...17536/?fref=nf

Must have been deleted.

This may or may not shed some light on one reasonable reason to block a training swap.

A few years ago I approved a training swap. For the uninformed reader, the result is someone junior to me moved to a training slot earlier than mine and someone senior to me moved to a slot after mine. I was happy with my training date and was very happy to help others swap slots.

Here is where things get interesting. Shortly after the swap the training letter disappeared for a few days and a new training letter came out with new dates. The junior pilot was still ahead of me and now all of a sudden so was the senior pilot. My training date was now delayed for one month. As I waived passover pay when I approved the swap the company had no reason to move the junior pilot behind me. The senior pilot is always going to be senior to me and so moving him ahead of me is totally copacetic (even though it wasn't what he wanted). So now that senior pilot has my old training date and I'm delayed one month. No big deal except that I now have the second to last training date before training stops for 3 months because of peak. Now I don't mind a one month delay but a four month delay... that doesn't work for a number of reasons beyond the scope of this explanation.

So pretty soon after the new training letter comes out I get an email asking for another training swap approval. Not surprisingly the senior pilot still wants a later date. He didn't want to get moved earlier but that is what the company chose to do because other names where added to the letter that probably would have generated passover pay for him.

This time I apologized but said no. He was very polite but also persistent so the discussion continued for a few days during which the company changed the training letter again moving me to the last slot before the long break. I apologized again but refused.

My only motivation was wanting to go to training +/- six weeks of my slot.

So, where do you think you'd have been on the new training letter, had you not approved their trade? One slot higher?:confused:

If I had brought an umbrella then it wouldn't have rained.

It is not a problem for me, I only go to trading when I am in the top 10 for upgrades, but the way the company games the lists I can't blame him. You only get burned once if you are smart. Want someone to blame, FDX ALPA has put up with this system for at least 20 years.

I'm more of the mind of blaming the CO. Blame ALPA if you must, but still can't see denying a fellow crew member a trade....

It's like denying a JS because it's inconvenient :(

I would like to hear any valid opinions on the possible downside of approving a trade. I for the life of me can not come up with any on my own, and feel that approving a trade is a simple no brainer solid that you ought to do for a fellow pilot.

We have no control over when we are "selected" to attend training. If you are pretty senior on the practice bid you should assume that you are going pretty quickly, but that isn't even cast in stone. The company has shown again and again that they will train in ANY order and then simply make up for it with passover pay as appropriate. My Airbus training slot change numerous times years ago, and with bids this big there is no way you are guaranteed to keep your original date, even without swaps. CargoCan could and probably would have had several date changes without the swap.

Our contract sucks in regard to ITU training. Allowing swaps is the only way to allow our fellow pilots to have the slightest control over their life once they take the initiative to bid a new seat, and I can't imagine taking that little bit of control away from them. It costs you nothing, and if the money is so important to you then go get your own swap.

Imagine if you had to get everybody's approval to do a trip trade? Same concept on a smaller scale. In my opinion swaps should be automatic (if the company approves, which they don't even always do).

Unless and until we negotiate to bid for ITU training we are just hurting ourselves by not allowing our fellow pilots to swap.

Did you read my post? I reread it to make sure it was reasonably clear.

The company can and will reshuffle the training letter at any time. They can always move someone senior back in front and in some cases will do so to prevent passover pay. Once you waive passover it is waived even if a new letter is published. Thinking that approving a swap is a zero sum transaction may or may not be true. I wasn't willing to risk losing a November slot for a February slot. Could it have happened anyway? Maybe, but I wasn't willing to be the one who made it a more likely scenario.

It had nothing to do with me going to training any sooner. It was about going to training within a reasonable time frame of when I expected to go. It was about not sabotaging myself.

If you approve a trade, you are waving passover associated with that trade. You are not waving passover from any other passover situation where the company decides to train a junior pilot in front of you. The only person giving that up is the senior pilot that is wanting to move backwards.