We had a short pre-work meeting yesterday with our SM, and he looked like a weatherman during a tornado outbreak. He blabbered on about how there really wasn't much info coming out of the meeting in MEM, but there would be some restructuring in the Express side of the house. He also said something about how Ground "only" makes $.17 per pkg and Express is at $.03 per package. He then went on for several minutes about how there would be no buyouts for hourlies, but there would be major losses by attrition, he was almost glowing on that one.
I think now that they are being told to downplay the huge cost advantage of Ground and spin-it in a way that doesn't make what they are doing so blatantly obvious. If Ground continues eating into the market share of UPS, there will be a bigger push for increased scrutiny of the Ground business model, which they don't want. Nobody in MEM wants to come out and say "we're gutting Express so we can shift as much business over to our more profitable Ground opco". That just isn't their way.
Instead, they will keep on with the effort to eliminate senior couriers and replace them with PT employees making much less. The Dental Care cutback will hit older employees disproportionately harder, and Memphis knows that they will take less crap before they say "enough", and just leave. Between hours cuts, increased harassment, and the undesirability of the job, they will get rid of a lot of people.
I'm forecasting another eventual class action on Age Discrimination. I don't think it will be that difficult to prove that Express is waging an all-out war to jettison senior employees. Fred is too cheap to offer a buyout. Instead, he'd rather railroad the people who built his empire for him out the door like criminals. What a nice guy.