Update?

On Labor Day weekend?

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Oh, you mean the announcement which required plagiarizing the U.S. Department of Labor to even feign understanding what Labor Day is all about, other than an excuse for a long weekend and the deadline for wearing white. Oh, and speaking of long weekend, it's an extra-long 3½-day weekend starting at noon on Friday for the MEC.

Labor Day to our MEC certainly was NOT about anything related to acting like a LABOR UNION and standing shoulder to shoulder with our fellow union members in picket lines across the country. Our MEC was too busy feeding their delusion that The Company would voluntarily come to the table with a checkbook and a generous heart to offer a TA that meets our meager goals. They must be so stunned that it didn't happen that they don't know how to word the announcement that they'll be extending negotiations yet another time -- will this be three times now? -- by adding more days of meetings. What they SHOULD be announcing is multiple picketing events and a strike vote, and they should be publishing The Company's openers which would expose The Company for who they really are instead of protecting them in hopes they'll be more generous to us.


I drove from Memphis to Atlanta so I could walk the picket line with Delta pilots. They seemed to understand the significance of Labor Day. I saw a couple of other FedEx pilots there as well. Some of us get it. It's time that our "leaders" started getting it. Or maybe it's time for new leaders.






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I fear you are probably right. We have TA'd multiple sections but they were all basically zero sum - there was no net monetary gain for the pilots. Meaning..it was easy. Just a way to take up time by the Company. Now comes the hard part - pay, retirement and, to a much lesser degree but involving numbers nonetheless, per diem. No progress has been made on this as of a week ago. Maybe they made great strides this week but if that were the case I imagine we would have heard something. We didn't - not a peep.

We've got decades of historical data here and the Company is likely doing the same thing .... delay, delay, delay until it's too painful not to. And there is virtually zero pain for the Company now. Add that to the recent drop in flight hours and the improvements in manning....I'm not sure exactly what would make the Company give on pay and retirement. Think we are in for a long peak - but don't worry. There aren't that many that are "status quo" as the above poster said. Mark your calendars for peak 2024.

I woke up to an email idk about you guys.

Delay, stall, drag their feet ...
 

I was awake a little earlier than that. ;)Wow. I'm surprised. The Company is delaying? That is SO unexpected. It's not like they have a history of being the world's best delay artists. :rolleyes:

And yet ...

Wise people learn from history, from mistakes of the past. Fools ignore them and repeat them. We must look very foolish right now.






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Isnt something in September being planed? Previous communications have mentioned it.

yup - Think I’m giving up hope with the team in place. About time to try something new as what we’ve been doing isn’t working.

Sorry, we don’t all live on Memphis time.

So just so we are clear, you doubted an update would come on Labor Day weekend. One did come with details and expectations of what’s to come. But Tony and crowd are still angry. So should we just pack it in and wait it out for the company to come to us? Unfortunately, the labor/management playing field isn’t level in this country, as you know. A strike vote, that’s about as worthless as it comes, has a company ever all the sudden come to the table because of a strike vote? I’m sure one is coming, it’s just a formality though. Negotiating is how things get done and I’m glad the team in place is taking that approach. How is our negotiating committee agreeing to more dates a sign of weakness?
Please Tony, grace us with your expert testimony on how things would be so much different if only you were elected to the MEC, because really isn’t that what this all about?

I have become confused. I read a post of someone mad about not getting a communication on Labor Day weekend regarding negotiations. A communication then comes out and they are now frustrated with the content. Mostly due to additional dates being added it appears. As someone who has been at an airline during mediation, I can say it definitely isn’t a magic stick. Ask the numerous airlines who have been in mediation the past 3+ years.

The biggest piece that isn’t being pointed out is us as pilots and what the majority has chosen regarding applying pressure to the company. Numerous of my recent trips are pilots on premium pay. OT gets covered. Now as it dries up we loose that leverage. You rise and fall as a group.

The communications I have seen the past several months have been clear on what has been asked of us. Most just make selfish decisions.

Planed?

Perhaps you meant planned.

Are you talking about the ongoing Phone Survey that will last until September 4th? The MEC might be briefed on the results in October. They'll be in Hollywood, FL for the bi-annual Board of Directors Meeting where they will be electing a new slate of National Officers and campaigning for one of our own to become the new ALPA First Vice President. They'll need to convince other BOD members why they should vote for a pilot from the airline that chose to NOT participate in the ALL-ALPA Labor Day weekend picketing event.

Or maybe you're referring to the ongoing Call to Action where we are being asked to let Congress know we oppose any attempt to raise the regulated age. (Funny, I don't remember ever being asked what our opinion is about the matter. The MEC simply made a unilateral decision to stake out a position and then called for the membership to support it. One might think a lesson could have been learned from the last time there was an effort to raise the regulated age. Another lesson from history ignored.)

Those are the only two things mentioned in the 30 August POSITIVE RATE Weekly Edition other than the invitation to join ALPA pilots in their picketing efforts somewhere other than Memphis.

The 23 August POSITIVE RATE Weekly Edition advertised a Family Awareness event in Charlotte, NC on Sunday, September 4th.

A 19 August communication from our SPSC Chair (who misspelled our National Membership Committee Chair's name) said, "we are planning other events through the end of the year." No mention of why we were planning Telephone Surveys and Family Awareness events after the point in time when the MEC apparently thought we would have a TA. He told us to "Get [our] blazers ready as temperatures start to cool ..." -- do newhires even own blazers anymore? He further told us to "be creative and flexible with [our] schedule to ensure [we] can show at SPSC events, and let the family know that [we] may need to travel on a day off to support the negotiation effort and secure our future." He goes on to warn us that "While [they] let everyone know of our June event prior to bidding for our unity event in June, in the future the heads up may not be available, and that is intentional." So, they intentionally are keeping any supposed plans secret from us and expecting us to respond when they say, "JUMP!" Who really thinks they'll get a better response than the June picketing event by announcing it at the last minute?

In the 16 August Negotiator's Notepad we were told, "... we continue to make satisfactory progress" and the negotiators were "... encouraged by the progress at the table." Of course, we had already seen our Amendable Day pass, and then we saw all of the meeting dates go by that had been scheduled with our Protocol Agreement. In other words, we were already falling into The Company's delay traps, but insisting that the progress was satisfactory. And you wonder why so many pilots are content, yea excited, to fill their schedules with extra trips and overtime.

Or, perhaps you're referring to the 4 August unsigned (we don't know who authored it) communication titled "FDX MEC Fastread" which told us "our Negotiating Support Team is preparing another FDX ALPA event in late September." At the time of writing, the last scheduled negotiating session was 24 August, and the nationwide ALL-ALPA picketing event had been scheduled and announced for 1 September. In the same Fastread, FDX ALPA pilots were encouraged by their MEC to attend a picketing event ANYWHERE BUT IN MEMPHIS. They intentionally chose to NOT host picketing events for FDX pilots on the same Labor Day weekend event with the rest of the 66,000 LABOR UNION pilots of ALPA.

Pray tell, why would The Company, knowing that we were satisfied with the progress of negotiations, even encouraged by the progress, and knowing that we were planning to NOT picket on 1 September with the rest of the Labor Union, and knowing that we might be planning Family Awareness events through the end of the year and might be planning SPSC events that would call for Blazers, and knowing that we are conducting telephone surveys, the results of which will likely not be briefed to the MEC before October, and knowing that we were possibly planning a Top Secret SPSC event in late September ... why would they even consider interrupting those long-term plans with an offer of pay raises and improvements to our retirement worthy of a TA ratification vote?

They will never offer such a proposal until they are convinced by our actions that our words are not empty. So far, we appear to be afraid and unwilling to so much as hold a picketing sign on Labor Day weekend.

But we are willing to add three more weeks of meetings to hear more reasons why The Company needs to delay.






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ill give you my perspective. NC has been saying time and time again that we are in the end stages and essentially just need this very last session. At the picketing in July both NC chair and MEC chair said more or less, we had better have a TA by end of August. We don’t. We continue to just delay delay delay and accept the virtual zero action. As has been said earlier the work rules were easy as little was changed and the net improvement is close to, if not exactly, zero.

Company will always want to delay delay. We said very vocally we agreed to a limited in scope negotiation that would complete by May22. Then we said no later than august. Now we are saying we will continue to add dates even though in the same breath we say zero has been done on the remaining sections. I suspect the Company is jumping for joy as they continue to string us along and many of you seem to be content with this everlasting extension to extension. I expect these actions will continue - we will hear something along the same lines in another month. Slow walk everything to get through peak and then it really doesn’t matter.

Think back to how much leverage we had a year ago, and even 6 months ago and what we have today and what we will have in 6 more months. That’s the path we are on…..