The "leave, organize or bendover" series of options were first posted by me quite some time ago. To get the full context, you'd have to go back to those posts.
When listing "leave" as an option, it wasn't intended as advice to just up and quit (as one poster here tried to suggest), it was intended as a statement that making a plan to get out of Express was one of the three possible options for those who were potentially viewing Express as a career.
I hired into Express thinking I was going to make it a career. I very quickly found out that the Express that existed when I hired on, was different from the Express that existed when the friends that suggested it too me hired on some 10 to 15 years earlier (they had all left field ops and were in Memphis and two other locations when I hired on).
After about a year with Express, I started making my plan to get out - I knew that the Express that existed in the early to mid 90s wasn't the Express that existed in the middle part of the last decade. At the same time, I started looking into the possibility of organizing Express from within. It took me a few years of getting my graduate degree while working part-time to finally "Leave".
The "bendover" option was intended for those who knew things were going to get even worse in the future, but who wouldn't sign a union card under any circumstances and refused to make any plan to get out - they were stuck. Their common excuse was along the line, "if we do organize, we'll all get locked out then we'll really be in trouble". They were bentover for Fred and were willing to accept whatever he offered (and took away) without offering any resistance or making any plan to get out to get a better living. They were figuratively "bentover".
The real change occurred when the defined benefit pension plan was taken away. This is when all the leaks started. The people who were in the salaried staff of Express and committed to a career themselves, were screwed by FedEx (along with the wage employees). They knew the only way the DBPP would ever be brought back is if the wage force was to unionize and get a decent pension plan negotiated. Then Express would've had no option but to restore a pension similar in value to the DBPP to ALL Express employees, including salaried employees. There are many within Express (including frontline management) who WANT Express to unionize, knowing it would improve their compensation as a consequence - thus all the leaks.
Trust me, my "leave" plan took years to execute. I wish I could've done it within a few months of deciding to leave, but I had to maintain myself with some income while I completed my Masters.
The leave option is more of a realization that things will only get worse in Express (since not enough are willing to organize to salvage Express as a viable career option for anyone, wage or salaried), so an individual begins to make an exit plan for life "after FedEx". It takes time, and because of that, people cannot wait until the last moment when they are facing even more "take-aways" from their compensation potentially placing them into serious hurt.
For many full-timers, they are literally looking at having their compensation gradually reduced by a third over the next couple of years with the impending changes - and even more after that. The first part of that change has already arrived - supposedly no OT is to be scheduled. It remains to be seen how successful Express is in implementing that - but they will eventually eliminate OT. Many full timers who are used to having a lifestyle geared to bringing in pay from working 50 hours a week, are going to be hurting in the near future. Since they are full-time, their ability to get outside part-time work is limited, since Express requires all full-time employees to be available for all shifts assigned without any advance notice given - they "own" the full-timers.
