You're confusing VEBAs. A VEBA - Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association - is nothing more than a tax vehicle for providing benefits.

We had 60-year-old pilots facing huge post-retirement health care costs. Until Medicare kicked in at 65, they would have to pay thousands to supplement their health care costs. This was an IMPEDIMENT to retirement. In other words, pilots would rather go to the back seat of the DC-10 than retire, because our health care costs as active pilots are far lower. The pre-medicare VEBA was funded by The Company, but only for the pilots who would reach age 60 during the "life" of that CBA, plus some time to negotiate the next CBA. The understanding was that the next wave of pilots would be addressed during the next CBA.

The money you pay for with 50 cents per credit hour is the other VEBA, the Post-Medicare Retiree Health Plan ("Post-Medicare Plan" or PRP) which everybody gets.

A VEBA is a trust fund. It has tax advantages, but you can't take it back. You can't even change the CBA to take it back. We might find a different way to achieve those objectives in the future, but what's done is done.


You won't find me defending the, as you call it, "mini-contract", but you misunderstand the union leadership pay. The CBA limits what The Company will pay, but it does not set the pay. That is done by the MEC -- the Block Reps we elect - and it is described in the ALPA MEC Policy Manual. So far, that has not changed. The CBA limits changed in the "mini-contract", but the Policy Manual compensation formulas have not.

Yet.






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Tony,
Most I know fault the ability to work past 60 and collect the VEBA intended to allow them to retire at 60 and the fact it was for a select few not the whole crew force. The amount should have been reduced by any years worked past 60.

You're absolutely right, we have over-60 pilots in every seniority block.

There are pros and cons to short-term fixes. In 2006, there was no Affordable Healthcare Act. Today's solution to the retirement impediment may look far different. On the other hand, although there was a commitment by the parties in 2006 to address the next wave in the next contract, the parties have now changed, along with their visions of how the problems should be addressed. I've actually heard reasoning to oppose a similar VEBA that argues that most people who reach age 60 either have 25 years of service, so they can afford their own pre-Medicare health care premiums, or they are military retirees, so they have TriCare. While it's true that those two circumstances cover a lot of pilots, it also leaves many behind - myself included.

Whether the solution is short-term or long-term, it was not addressed in our 2011 CBA, and that was one reason I opposed it. The impediment to retirement at age 60 still exists, and the guy who missed out on the pre-Medicare VEBA will be turning 60 soon.






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Did you ask about it before the vote for Contract 2011?

The parties in 2006 agreed to address the next wave in the next contract.

But we decided we didn't like our party . . .






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I understand completely.

The unintended consequences constitute a good reason to use a short-term solution for the pre-Medicare healthcare problem. Now we can see the solution created its own, new problem, and we can work on developing a different solution that fixes the new problem.

The disadvantage of a trust is that you can't take it back, or place conditions on it like, "You have to retire to get it."







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There have always been excess bids when airplanes were being retired. The DC-10 was no different.

The big difference, and the Excess Bid to which I am referring here, is when an Excess Bid was held to allow over-60, under-65 Second Officers to leave those seats for any seat their seniority would hold. That bid contained -1 Excesses in most of the other seats so that every DC-10 engineer that went to the left seat of a wide-body kicked the most junior Captain out of that same seat. That Excess bid came after the age change.

It was a management decision.






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I understand the need for excess bids and their process. I was specifically asking for the timeline. I thought the bid was posted, then the age change went into effect. The bid was subsequently cancelled and then reposted. After it closed, then we had the DC-10 excess bid. The thing that most don't realize was, since the bid reopened and had vacancies, there were some senior DC-10 f/e's (way senior to me) that could only hold nb f/o on the vacancy bid and they wanted to guarantee a window seat. Yes, some held the left seat of some a/c and some held the right seat of some. Since they bid out on the vacancy bid, once the excess bid came out, the individuals that had bid out(even if they hadn't gone to training yet) we not part of the excess, so didn't get to go directly to whatever they could hold. Believe it or not, this actually was better than if they only had the excess, where they all could have gone directly to the WB capt seat or the highest seat possible. I am not justifying the actions of some or their reasons for doing so but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

That's not how I recall the timeline, but the Postings are still available at pilot.fedex.com, so I can go back and look. We also had an Excess Bid that closed, and then had most of the awards cancelled. Most people I talk to think all the awards were cancelled, but I know that some were not. My excess from the left seat of the DC-10 was one that went as scheduled.


I'll take another look at those postings when I get a few spare minutes.






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OK, the Regulated Age changed on December 13, 2007.

All of the Vacancy and Excess Postings prior to that are no longer on the pilot.fedex.com website. I have them archived, but I'll have to look later to see if there was a Posting which was issued before the 13th and cancelled after.

Posting 08-01 Jan 02, 2008 -- 149 Vacancies, 37 Excesses (all SFS)

Posting 08-02 Apr 15, 2008 -- 95 Vacancies (HKG FO and B-757), 377 Excesses (B-727 and DC-10, all seats)

Posting 08-03 - Cancelled


If memory serves, the Posting prior to the age change you're thinking of closed -- wasn't cancelled -- but many of the individual bid awards were cancelled.

If you're saying that the shuffling of senior pilots over 60 was more orderly with the Vacancy Posting than with the Excess Postings, I agree.






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Yep, I looked at the same info. If memory serves, it was 08-01 that they bid the window seat so they didn't get to play in the 08-02 excess. Which by a stroke of luck worked to our favor since many could have been wide body captains. But a lot don't know that.