There is a lot of grey area under the laws. Such as is it illegal to hire illegal immigrants to do work in the fields? Yes it it is but is often ignored and enforcement is non existent. Does that make it right? No.
That's a good comparison. If farmers, or big agribusiness, paid enough that Americans would be willing to do the back breaking work in the fields, the extra costs would be passed on to consumers and we'd all pay much higher prices for food. Same with FedEx Ground. FedEx knows it can make more per pkg with Ground, and the big volume shippers know they can save more per pkg with Ground. The Ground contractors know as middlemen they can do well too. It all hinges on employees being willing to work for less and with few if any benefits, depending on the contractor. If FedEx had to pay more to get people willing to do the job then there's not much point in even having Ground. As long as there are people working at lower paid jobs like fast food or Walmart, as long as millions are looking for work, as long as there is a steady stream of military retirees in their 40's and 50's looking to supplement their pension, there will be people willing to work at Ground. The military retirees already have their pension and their medical is covered by the VA. I'm sure FedEx crunched the numbers and are confident they can man Ground. So what it comes down to at this point is finding out how screwed we are. We know there's no chance things will go back to like before, now it's just a matter of seeing exactly what they plan to do with us.
