B757-200
Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 115; Flight Crew Total 18724; Flight Crew Type 2852
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Hazardous Material Violation
General Maintenance Action
Human Factors
After push crew advised ready; push clearance received from Ground Control; and brakes were released: push crew said they were having a problem with the tug and to set the parking brake. I set the brake and canceled our push clearance with Ground Control. Then; another voice came on the intercom and said they needed to open the cargo doors to move bags from the aft cargo to the forward cargo to comply with Hazmat loading requirements.We had not received a 'Planned DG Notification' message during preflight and contacted XXX Station Ops. They said we would get the notification with the final weights when they were done loading. Approximately 15 minutes later; the ground crew re-closed the baggage compartments. When we received the final weights; we still did not have a dangerous goods notification. Somewhere in the conversation with the ground crew and Operations; lithium-ion batteries were mentioned as being the item in question. I inquired with Station Ops again; and after a couple of minutes they advised the Hazmat (dangerous goods) on board did not require pilot notification. FOM 9.10.1 says that pilots are to be notified of dangerous goods except for 'those items exempt from notification;' so we continued with our flight with the assumption that the dangerous goods were among the exempt items.Why would a dangerous goods items requiring defined separation in the cargo compartments not be a required notification? If an item is such a hazard; that it has to be loaded in a specific manner; shouldn't the pilots be aware of its existence via the DG Notification process?
B757-200 Captain reported being notified that DG onboard did not require flight crew notification due to being classified as 'exempt from crew notification.'