Great Post and yes we have wasted the massive leverage we have had during COVID. The company has upped staffing and after peak our leverage is gone.

I was teasing, and that's why I included the emoticon with the smile and the wink. I tried to start out with a light-hearted tone. I'm sorry that I apparently did not adequately communicate that intent.


Indeed, I doubted we would see anything over the weekend when we did not receive an update on Thursday (the last day of meetings) or Friday (the day before the Labor Day weekend). It's not very common to receive union communications on Saturday morning. We have a fantastic support staff in Memphis, and I think they should be able to enjoy the weekend free from work, but somebody had to interrupt their family time to publish the message. I was wrong -- we got Negotiator's Notepad: Update 19 on a holiday Saturday morning.

But the content is more of the same. The Company is continuing to delay, and we're playing along.

No, we don't pack it in. We take action, beginning last November when our CBA became amendable. Continuing until we have a TA and until it is ratified.


Good question.

Do you remember what happened the last time WE took a strike vote?

The Company invited our union President (the equivalent of our present day MEC Chair) to meet him in a dark parking lot to seal a deal with a handshake which hinged on us agreeing to NOT count the strike vote.

Still think strike votes don't matter to FedEx? Spare me the arguments that the President will never let us strike. Think about the press that FedEx would get if we voted to strike. Just like UPS customers did in 1987, customers would be scrambling en masse to find reliable alternatives for their shipping needs. It absolutely, positively matters.

But it doesn't just happen organically. It requires education and motivation, and a lot of it. And we as a pilot group have received none of it. We have not been prepared for is, and that failure rests squarely on the MEC.


Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. The problem is not the meetings -- it's the failure to do anything else. It's the failure to levy consequences for not meeting the goals. It's the failure to impose any motivation to accept our proposals for pay and retirement. There's no carrot, no stick, just an unlimited number of meetings on a calendar that extends through the end of the year and beyond.


This isn't about me, it's about US. I could retire and get on with my life and skip all this mess. But the pilots of FedEx deserve much better.

But since you asked, I'll play with your question. How would things be different? As only one vote out of 15, I obviously could not guarantee any action of the MEC, but I guarantee what I would be advocating for. For starters, I advocated for a Negotiations Kickoff Rally when negotiations began 6 months prior to the amendable date. Too many pilots were not even aware that we were officially in negotiations -- that was a failure to communicate to the membership. I would have advocated for a much more proactive education campaign to make sure every pilot knows not only the RLA process and where we stand in that process, but who is on the other side of the Negotiating Table from us. It's not the image the FedEx projects to the public, or even the image that hopeful pilots have when they interview for jobs here. The real FedEx who negotiates AGAINST us is much much different. I would have advocated for a Protocol agreement that included negotiation sessions sufficient to complete the deal by the Amendable Date, not 6 months later. When we reached the Amendable Date, I would have advocated for another Rally and the commencement of Informational Picketing on the first Sunday of every bid month. When we reached the end of originally scheduled meetings with no TA, I would have published The Company's Openers -- another way to open the starry eyes of pilots to the real character of who we're dealing with.

I would have advocated for our full participation in the ALPA-wide Informational Picketing on Labor Day weekend instead of scheduling a day of negotiations meetings on the same date. If FedEx wanted to avoid the bad publicity, they could write a big check. And speaking of checks, I would advocate for our Negotiating Committee to begin each meeting with The Company by announcing the size of the Retro Payment that would be required for an acceptable deal, and that number would be an absolute, non-negotiable minimum that would obviously go up with every passing day.

In short, I would advocate for a much more active approach to dealing with a party to negotiations who has a long and storied history of stringing us along with delays, stalls, and feet dragging. As I type this, a Delta pilot is shown on a national network with picketers behind him explaining how Delta pilots are prepared to strike. Meanwhile, who in the world is even the slightest bit aware that FedEx pilots are far behind the industry in pay rates and have a retirement commensurate with 25-year-old pay rates and IRS limits?

It is the responsibility of the MEC to prepare the membership for the actions that will be required to motivate The Company to complete the deal. Rather than accept that responsibility and act on it, they have elected to act like The Company has changed its spots and will play nice because we're being nice. So far we have done nothing to demonstrate we are ready to complete the deal. The words on our lanyards, Now is the Time, are meaningless without actions to support them.

I started off this post by admitting I was wrong, and I'll be thrilled to confess again that I was wrong if the current approach produces a ratifiable TA. But I'm not holding my breath.






.

Wall Street picketing
 

Oh, now I get it. We couldn't picket in Memphis on 1 September along with the rest of the 66,000 pilots of ALPA because we need a handful of pilots to show up on 26 September in Lower Manhattan.

I made my reservation. Who else is going?






.

so you were wrong twice. Actually three times, but I’m sure you have more criticism to offer.

What was I wrong about this time?

We should have picketed in multiple locations on the 1st, and could still picket in multiple locations on the 26th. We still haven't heard from the MEC since the end of negotiations meetings, only from two committee chairs. We still haven't been told anything about what we've asked for in retirement or in pay, even in general terms, nor what The Company has offered. All we know is more meetings have been scheduled, and peak is right around the corner. Aren't you motivated now?






.

I’ll see you there Tony. I genuinely appreciate your drive and determination. I wish it was focused about 65 degrees in a different direction but it’s better than what most of our group puts out there. You see it as failed leadership. I see it as a group that has never nor will ever trust a union and deep down isn’t comfortable with being apart of one. At the end of the day I focus on trying to bring more into the fold, through direct communication and my union work. I see your approach as sowing seeds of doubt, in leadership and the union in general. We could go back and forth on that but I don’t really think it accomplishes anything.

That's the thing. Even those who disagree on a lot of things can stand shoulder to shoulder in support of a good cause. We've done it many times before, and I have no doubt that we can do it again. We just need a little leadership and encouragement. I have more faith in the membership than many of our leaders give them credit for.

I had a professional driving course instructor explain it like this. Most drivers think they are better drivers than most other drivers on the road. Most drivers think they are better than other drivers they personally know, but those drivers are in turn better than most other drivers on the road. Obviously they can't all be right. Similarly, we tend to trust ourselves to do the right thing more than we trust others we know, and trust them more than those we don't know. At the same time, those people who we don't know tend to trust themselves more than they trust us to do the right thing. It's not until we observe each other doing the right thing that we learn to trust and depend on and rely on each other to do the right thing.

Building trust and unity recognizes those dynamics and requires gradually increasing opportunities to display behaviors that instill trust and unity. Little things like wearing lanyards and displaying bag tags might seem insignificant on their own, but when we see each other intentionally acting in small ways to build trust and unity, we learn to rely on each other for bigger things and more substantial behaviors. Leadership plays a critical role in building unity and trust by educating, motivating, and cultivating opportunities. It cannot simply be turned on like a switch. It takes mentors, and those who lead by example. And, like it or not, whether they are aware of it or not, our elected representatives are leading. They're either leading us to emulate positive behaviors, or they're leading us to do nothing, to carry on like everything is situation normal, go about your business. I think it's the latter, and I think that's why you have such little faith in the pilot group as a whole.

I'm not trying to sow seeds of doubt about the union in general because I think it's made up of mostly good people. I am critical of elected leaders when I think they're failing to lead us in the right direction. I think we have unlimited potential to succeed, but they're failing to take us down that road.


But, hey, I'm always open to debate as long as our ultimate goal is to benefit the pilot force. And even if I'm skewed 65° off, that still moves me 42% along the X axis. :)






.

I trust our leaders more than you. They did give us an update yesterday. If there's more that they require of me then I'll be willing to listen and probably help. Hopefully there's a resolution this month. If not then we'll see what happens.

Personally I do think a strike vote would make sense assuming our pilots would send the right message.

Wait. Who do you think our leaders are?

We received 1 e-mail yesterday from the MEC -- it was the Labor Day Weekend office closure notice.

We received 2 e-mails today (maybe yesterday I suppose depending on your time zone) from 2 committee chairs, the Negotiating Committee and the Strategic Planning and Strike Preparedness Committee.

Where is the update from our leaders of which you speak? Or do you think the committee chairs are our leaders?



The SPSC Chair just asked you to show up in NYC. Are you going?








.