"Captive meetings" involve entire work groups, and there is a scripted presentation by corporate representatives to present a VERY anti-union agenda.
What you are describing, is one of FedEx's 'get togethers', where a handful employees are picked (in some cases randomly, in others hand picked) to sit down around a conference table, listen to one of FedEx's 'fairy tales' presented by upper management, then be allowed to ask some questions (the presumption is that the questions are either pre-screened or the employees would be too intimidated to ask the real hardball questions).
What appears to have happened, is that the employees were picked randomly to attend, got the dog and pony show, THEN one or two of them decided, "What the hell", and started throwing out hard ball questions. The rest followed the lead (there are leaders, I wrote about this in the not too distant past), and they decided to speak their minds, knowing there is some safety in numbers.
Why in the hell can't the wage employees of Express realize that and follow through on that concept?
Corporate management KNOWS that they are serving up a pile of dung to the wage employees, they aren't that out of touch. It is their job, to try to occasionally go out and convince the wage employees that the crap sandwich isn't really all that bad, and that they ought to be thankful for what they are getting.
Sometimes, they overestimate their 'salesmanship', in trying to convince the wage employees about the benefits of a daily serving of crap sandwich.
After a meeting such as you describe, the senior management attendees hold a meeting of their own, and discuss what they saw. Decisions are made as to whether to offer some pay increases to 'soothe the natives', or to impose a higher degree of discipline to intimidate ALL employees into compliance.
Was the meeting recorded (video) to be used as a potential presentation at all Freight locations within the 'region' covered by San Bernardino? Obviously with hard ball questions flying around, the video won't be shown, but if there was a video made of the meeting, it would show the INTENTION of FedEx to show the video in locations (presenting the dog and pony show without senior management having to travel to each Freight location).
Express makes quite a few videos of meetings such as this, with one or more members of senior management giving a dog and pony show, having the meeting recorded, then having the video played in all the stations covered by whatever regional VP gave the meeting.
If there were some 'fireworks' in a Freight meeting, that tells me that conditions in Freight are even worse than Express.
charade doesn't work here in the WEST!
