FedEx, The Union-Buster? (FDX, UPS) - 24 7 Wall St
FedEx Corporation (NYSE: FDX) may have been part of the reason for the rally late today that took markets into positive territory. Headlines hit late in the day on the Dow Jones broad tape from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, a Democrat, saying that the proposed legislation that would make it easier for FedEx workers to unionize has no chance of passing in Congress.This is an issue we have followed for some time. United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE: UPS) is mostly unionized and is the number one competitor for FedEx. If these workers in aviation and trucking are placed under the National Labor Relations Act, it would then be on the same ground (no pun intended) as UPS.
Some have maintained that if those workers are allowed to unionize that the cost would be thousands of dollars per employee per month. Those costs are not necessarily just out-of-pocket costs based upon the potential of higher wages and higher benefits, but include the opportunity cost of less business per employee. It is a safe bet that calculations vary greatly from source to source.
There is a risk of jobs cuts at stake and there is the issue of a per-employee cost… An article from Scripps in 2009 noted, “Thousands of FedEx’s 290,000 employees would be affected and some analysts say the company’s expenses would increase 30 percent as a result of unionization.”
FedEx Corporation (NYSE: FDX) may have been part of the reason for the rally late today that took markets into positive territory. Headlines hit late in the day on the Dow Jones broad tape from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, a Democrat, saying that the proposed legislation that would make it easier for FedEx workers to unionize has no chance of passing in Congress.This is an issue we have followed for some time. United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE: UPS) is mostly unionized and is the number one competitor for FedEx. If these workers in aviation and trucking are placed under the National Labor Relations Act, it would then be on the same ground (no pun intended) as UPS.
Some have maintained that if those workers are allowed to unionize that the cost would be thousands of dollars per employee per month. Those costs are not necessarily just out-of-pocket costs based upon the potential of higher wages and higher benefits, but include the opportunity cost of less business per employee. It is a safe bet that calculations vary greatly from source to source.
There is a risk of jobs cuts at stake and there is the issue of a per-employee cost… An article from Scripps in 2009 noted, “Thousands of FedEx’s 290,000 employees would be affected and some analysts say the company’s expenses would increase 30 percent as a result of unionization.”