"Boycott FedEx" by Chris Hedges

WhatCrass

Active Member
One of my favorite journalists wrote this great piece on how FedEx treats its workers when they get injured and how our CEO owns members of Congress with $18 million worth of bribes (AKA "reelection donations").

Boycott FedEx


Chris Hedges: Boycott FedEx - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Posted on Feb 22, 2010

By Chris Hedges

Dean Henderson’s career with FedEx ended abruptly when a reckless driver plowed into his company truck and mangled his leg. His doctor will decide this week if it needs to be amputated. No longer able to drive, stripped of value in our commodity culture, he was tossed aside by the company. He became human refuse. He spends most of his days, because of the swelling and the pain, with his leg raised on a recliner in the tiny apartment in Fairfax, Va., he shares with his stepsister. He struggles without an income and medical insurance, and he fears his future.

Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.
 
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MrFedEx

Engorged Member
One of my favorite journalists wrote this great piece on how FedEx treats its workers when they get injured and how our CEO owns members of Congress with $18 million worth of bribes (AKA "reelection donations").

Boycott FedEx


Chris Hedges: Boycott FedEx - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

Posted on Feb 22, 2010

By Chris Hedges

Dean Henderson’s career with FedEx ended abruptly when a reckless driver plowed into his company truck and mangled his leg. His doctor will decide this week if it needs to be amputated. No longer able to drive, stripped of value in our commodity culture, he was tossed aside by the company. He became human refuse. He spends most of his days, because of the swelling and the pain, with his leg raised on a recliner in the tiny apartment in Fairfax, Va., he shares with his stepsister. He struggles without an income and medical insurance, and he fears his future.

Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.

The obvious political bias of the writer is problematic here, but it doesn't hide the truth of what FedEx does with it's injured workers. The word "discard" isn't strong enough. FedEx targets employees who have become a non-revenue source, which is sickening on so many levels. Over my years with this company I have seen many employees get injured through no fault of their own and then be tossed away like garbage. This is a job where it's simply a matter of time before you get hurt. Like UPS workers, our bodies take a repetitive pounding every day. Eventually, you will damage your knees, your back, or something else. That's when the demons in Memphis go to work and begin the process of eliminating you.

Once again, you are nothing but a unit of production to Fred S. Like any of his assets, whether they be an airplane or a van, once your useful "life" is over at FedEx you go to the crusher. If you're human it's figurative, and if you're a machine, it is literal.

Either way, you have been purged and taken off the books. Fred S is an evil bastard.
 

DOWNTRODDEN IN TEXAS

Well-Known Member
Kind of reminds me of the "rendering plant" in The Matrix. The dead are processed and force-fed to the living. Here it's a figure of speech, but it's a mental game for them, hit your numbers or you're gone and your co-workers are left to speculate why you "left" without saying good-bye.
 

LTFedExer

Well-Known Member
Since my Google search only keeps bringing up the same article, I'd like to know what FedEx has to say about his termination.
 

ex fed exer

Well-Known Member
"We will vigorously defend our position in court..."

this is good, but you have forgotten how POWERFULL "at-will employee" works for fred in a court of law. An "at-will" fed ex employee in court is a jew in a nazi court represented by a nazi lawyer, before a nazi judge, in front of a nazi jury, cross examined by a nazi prosecuter. what do you think the verdict will be?

in 1973 fred put this princples in place, so 40 years later he could screw you. that is the mentallity you are dealing with.
 
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