FDXLAG

"...Remaining reserve days will be made available as reserve blocks, in the View/Add window, Secondary Working Window (SWW), and beyond."

First the fact that the VTO reserve days are "blocks" lessens the company efficiencies gains tremendously. The main effect will be trash reserve lines will now become trash VTO Reserve lines.

Yes there are efficiencies to be gained in PBS, estimates are between 10 and 15%. Let's assume reserve lines are 20% of total lines. That means 20% of 20% of all lines will now be 12.5% more efficient. By my math that comes to about a 0.5% efficiency gain on lines for the company. Ok it is a give back.

Now let's talk about PBS, are the complaints because it allows the company more efficiencies or because in general pilots lose control of their schedules to include vacation. If the major complaint with PBS it allows the company to be more efficient you have a .5% point. I made the same point when we lost conflict bidding and training in 2006, although that probably saved the company a lot more. If the complaint with PBS is we lose control of our days off, I think you are wrong. VTO line holders will have more control of their days off with this TA.

Raptor

I actually agree a more modern PBS is better than what we have now. I don't like "black hole" approval of the SLR. I want to see the 80 pages of the PBS system. It's critical to see the parameters and keys to running it. Our union is more "business-like" with the company than I care for. I don't want a Chairman only approval--no matter how much I like or respect CD. That's why I want pilots to vote (in a TA or in an LOA) on the final product. I think the pilots are ready and desire a more confrontational approach to the company. We want to see our contract held up and not nibbled away at constantly.

Let's say your .5% efficiency gain is true. That's 21 less pilots on property needed. Over the course of a 25 year career, in pay alone that's over $125,000,000 savings! Add in $68,000,000 in savings (21x$130,000x25 years expectancy) in A plan not needed, $112,000,000 in B fund not paid over a 25 year career, estimated $50,000,000 in benefits not paid, that adds up to huge savings of about $350,000,000 million the company will never need to spend merely because it will never ever have to hire that "0.5% efficiency gain".

Now go back to previous posts where I ID other efficiency gains. Add that in and over a Billion saved in pilots they never have to hire. Efficiency gains have an impact greater than anything else in the contract in saving the company money. Giving them the ability to operate the same amount of freight/flying with less pilots forever is huge for them.

I've shown our contract is perhaps cost neutral for the company. Add the $1,000,000,000 in savings by not having to have as many pilots on property and now we are very deep into the red as a crew force on this TA.

FDXLAG

Maybe, I could argue the vacation provisions in the VTO language will result in more vacation utilization not less and cost the company 21 more pilots per year. Like sick days, a guy who saves vacation is going to save vacation. But what if I need a week off next month and only 6 lines let me bid around it. I put VTO as choice number 7 and add some unplanned vacation.

Raptor

A very good point.

Pilot behavior is very hard to cost or predict.

But, right now secondary line holders use 100% of their vacation. So the company has no where to go but up as we are already at a limit.

The possibility of increased vacation use is someone who bids VTO solely to be able to use vacation days where he had no vacation before--to get days off that are critical to him. Note that for your assumption to work (to use more vacation than planned) he would be VTO/VAC employing where he had no vacation previously. But, he would still have his full vacation in other months. He would either have to go negative or balance out by avoiding vacation use in normal bidding or in another VTO month. So, I don't see vacation use as increasing much and much more likely to decrease.

Last, no matter what we think about vacation usage, I think everyone agrees that 20% of reserve lines removed from the bid pack means more numbers of VTO lines than we have currently to fill the void. And, PBS/VTO is more efficient in scheduling pilots so big, big gains in the hundreds of millions of dollars to the company by pilot staffing avoidance.

Having fun with the give and take. Keep it coming!

Rock

Raptor, I think the going in premise of your argument is worth taking another look at. From my read of what you are saying, if the company saves more money than we gain out of this TA, our contract is concessionary. But can't changes in a contract benefit both parties? In my opinion, whether one side of an agreement benefits more than the other becomes much less of a concern IF...big IF...both sides are actually gaining an improvement. I don't think you would argue that an objective of negotiations is to make the other side feel pain. Ideally, in the mutually dependent relationship a labor union has with its company, agreements that improve the bottomline for both sides are the best outcome. In a notional TA, if each FedEx pilot makes financial and QOL gains, is the TA a failure unless the company loses?

busdriver12

Therein lies the problem. If there were 60 reserve lines and 50 VTO's before, now there can be 48 reserve lines and 62 VTO's (or less, with efficiency gains). There are senior people who live in Memphis that bid reserve, certainly many of them after the TA will not choose to bid a VTO, where they don't even know when they'll be working until the last minute.

Raptor

I think you have a good point. With this TA, let's say the company needs 200 less pilots to fly the same block hours. They save $700,000,000 million plus in staffing avoidance--if not more as I just made a very quick calculation.

I've said in other posts that our raise and bonus are cancelled or greatly mitigated by health care and A plan. And, beyond that, I see more concession value than gain value in the TA. One of the big value items in the NC paper is SLB which I don't like on principle.

When we don't recognize that more efficient pilot staffing by the company is a big cost avoidance and capture some of that value, we do ourselves a disservice.

I am not as concerned as to the TA value overall as I am concerned as to its value in gains for individual pilots. We could come up with win-win scenarios for the company and the individual pilot. We could easily argue that big gains for us and some gains for the company (by their efficiency gains) are win-win. In that win-win, we recognize our company pilot force gets smaller.

Remember when we had over 4500 pilots and about 4190 now? What happened to that staffing level? Some is undermanned (about 100 I think), some is a little less flying (guessing at 75) and the remainder 125 is a reduction as the company has found ways to tweak our efficiencies. Don't we all think we're working harder. Shorter turns internationally, more multi legs both internationally and domestically? And I'm sure other posters can come up with other changes over the years since the 2006 contract. The company has saved a billion uncaptured dollars to now, they will get a billion more under this TA.

Instead of cost neutral and zero sum all items in the TA, there is a rising tide of value we all can share in. Index our A fund. Expensive but affordable based on what I've shown. It's only a line in the sand because we permit it to be.

And to your question, our TA isn't a failure until the company loses. I just don't want to lose by a blowout. We all say we have a pie to split up. I think there are hidden pies of savings. Give us an extra pie, I'll be happy and the company still has pies in reserve for them to improve their bottom line.

busdriver12

I'm not sure why you don't think that the word "block" isn't going to be interpreted any way that they think is convenient. A one day block is never going to be convenient for the company, however, if they decide to add that into your schedule, what can you do about it?

And at least with trash reserve lines, people know what they have been awarded, a week earlier.

I have no idea why you think VTO holders will have more control over their days off with this TA. First, before they implement the PBS (but we won't call it PBS), what causes any more control over getting ones days off? They can (and will) still ignore your input, as if it never existed. It is a preference. The companies desires will still trump yours.

And with the Secondary Line Replacement system, it has not been created, so we have no idea how it is going to even work. So how do you attribute more control over your days off with it?

FDXLAG

Bus, you either trust the MEC or you dont. We will either have a better VTO system or we will say no. Hard language will be written on paper and will be areed to by us. So I guess I should say we will either have more control over our VTO schedules or we will have the same worthless control over our VTO schedules. If anything the company has an incentive to water our eyes with a tremendously pilot friendly VTO system so as to try to sell us on PBS down the road.

busdriver12

I trust that they will do what they think is best for us, though whether the final product would end up better for the pilots, I don't know. The other side seems pretty competent at fooling us. There is plenty of hard language that is missing from this TA, no reason to have high expectations for that. I hope they have many pilots who actually bid these things, and who have worked for other companies giving input, with not just a small number of people hammering something out and then presenting it to us (without a vote).

They've had a very long time to accomplish even one improvement to the VTO system. There are simple changes they could have implemented quickly, that the union would have jumped at. They've been trying to sell us on PBS for many years already, they've had tremendous incentive. I don't think anything will change now, sadly.