I will say this first: News of layoffs breeds layoffs.
-I work for Fedex, and I am VERY scared right now. They have threatened to furlough pilots for the past few months, and it is obvious that we are over-manned.
The System Chief Pilot, Orlando Rosado told us this in emails. He's fighting the bean-counters, who think we should have already furloughed people, but he knows that we have two new airplane types coming into our fleet [757 and 777], and the transition will require a lot of people.
At the same time, when you are 79 people from the bottom of a seniority list that has 4679 on it....you can see why I am more than just a little bit concerned-!
Fedex has NEVER furloughed ONE pilot in 36 years. The corporate mind-set is that furloughing pilots is an admission of ERROR. "We screwed up", per se, and this place doesn't like errors AT ALL. When you join this company, they tell you if you work hard and have a good attitude, we WILL take care of you. This is called the "Purple Promise", and everyone at Fedex is indoctrinated in this. I've worked at four cargo airlines now, and the rampers who load/unload the airplanes I fly at Fedex are very different from the people who did the same manual labor at those other airlines. When I walk off the plane carrying my bag, the dollars-per-hour person on the stairs always says hello to me. Fedex fires anyone that is less than friendly.
This corporate culture is pretty much unique, and I recommend anyone that is unemployed immediately go to
www.fedex.com and look for careers. Go to the bottom of the page, and find the small gray link that says "careers". If I am laid-off, I will try to get a job as a ramper for Fedex at Fort Lauderdale airport. That and work jobs in local bars- Fort Lauderdale has no shortage of these!
I live cheap; I think I can survive a two-year furlough and still make the payments on my house without hitting my savings to any real extent.
N!