answers
Newcrew
Kind of. It is not related to what you do at work. It is more about what you do with your time off. CX relies heavily on crew flexibility. Many years ago there were only work days and G days. After many bouts of contract compliance we now have O days(grey days), many more days on reserve and we have to call CX after every pattern terminating in HKG. This is due to past crew inflexibility. SO it basically means you don't answer the phone unless obligated to and you don't work on days off.
Ash1111
CX withdrew their pay offer - so no payrises planned. On the contrary, pay cuts are planned as if you start in Australia now as a DEFO in 2007 you would be on about $118K a year but on CoS08 you would be on $92-94K a year.
I assume you are talking about a US base? There are currently 2 pay scales - pax FO and freighter FO. Pax FO gets $103K and freighter gets $63K. The UFO(unified first officer) scale proposed would pay about $71K to fly either/both freighter and pax. It is hard to know for sure about that last figure as CX withdrew its pay offer.
Aircrew Services Limited was a company CX introduced in the mid 90s to circumvent our CoS(pay). IN late 99 the AOA gave the opportunity for ASL employees to join the CX seniority list as new joiners on 1/1/00 - they could remain in rank but could not transfer off freighter fleet until their seniority number allowed it. At this stage no ex ASL member has the seniority to be a pax captain.
Some ASL employees were close to or over 55 and to sign over would have meant immediate or impending retirement so they remained as ASL employees so they could work till RA60. Some other ASL employees decided their career was more important than being part of the CX seniority list so they remained in ASL to get an early command even though they were far from retirement age.
Because there is some animosity between the groups, as a CRM issue it was decided to not roster them to fly with CX employees. How this was effectively carried out was the creation of the FACA (Freighter Aircraft Crewing Agreement) which gives CX employees the option to NOT fly the freighter. As the ASL guys are effectively embargoed onto the freighter, those CX employees electing not to fly freighters do not mix with them on a flight deck thus preventing a CRM issue. New CX employees don't have this right as it is waived in one of your joining documents.
An additional concern CX pilots have is that when you fly the freighter you are subject to freighter rostering rules which are a lot more flexible for the company and more disruptive for your personal life.
The existence of the FACA removes much of CX's rostering flexibility as it is undermanned on the freighter fleet. The FACA would cease to exist if there were no ASL pilot(FE's excluded) employees.
The current PPRUNE rumour is that somehow CX will circumvent this by allowing these ASL pilots to resign from ASL and rejoin CX as junior employees. There are some contractual issues to be dealt with. Effectively CX would be recruiting direct entry captains which is not allowed within our CoS.
During negotiations, it was obvious that CX would like us to allow ASL pilots to join our seniority list wef 1/1/08 so that the FACA would cease to exist. We did point out that their other option was to fire the 41 ASL pilots but apparently CX only fires CX employees en masse, not ASL. Or maybe because the freighter fleet is so undermanned now those 41 pilots are more important than 49 pax pilots were 6 years ago.
Ash, if they were somehow to get on the seniority list on 1/1/08 then obviously they would be senior to you!
Management/ACMS
I love the satire and sarcasm;-)