Is the grass really greener?
- Thread starter cheryl
- Start date
brownmonster
Man of Great Wisdom
Sounds like Fred's doing the ole "circuit city" on the older employess. How's that non-union workin for ya.
RockyRogue
Agent of Change
I saw UPS/FedEx mentioned on that show sometime in the last few months. I think he actually spoke positively about UPS. It was late at night and I wasn't thinking straight, though
. -Rocky
brownmonster
Man of Great Wisdom
He said if you want to buy a stock for $70 and sell it 7 years later for $70, UPS is for you!
RockyRogue
Agent of Change
Whooooooops!!!! My mistake!!! In the Rocky Mountain West, his show is on at midnight or later, I think. I was probably half asleep when he mentioned UPS. Regardless, if Wall St. could see through Fred's smoke and mirrors machine, it would be a good day for UPS! -Rocky
What a stupid cow.
FedEx Express has superior corporate culture and job satisfaction than UPS. FedEx hires the right employees for it company, not just anyone with a pulse. As a result, employees say hi to each other. People are a lot more collective there than in UPS' unionized environment where there's this "us vs. them" mentality. Employees say hi to each other. The company listens to their employees and their concerns. I've met the regional president on three separate occasions. If a center is too small, they'll just build a new one. We did after our industrial engineers found it ridiculous that we would have to bring package cars from the parking lot outside into the station after the first wave (the early am wave) heads out; they said every vehicle should be inside the building at the start of the sort, placing 30 boxes to go into a 2nd wave package car was considered needless and inefficient. Equipment is replaced frequently (read: no p5s built in 1985 with manual steering and transmission).Your work group manager (equivalent of an on-car sup) is (normally) nice and their raises are based on their employee satisfaction (amongst other factors). Hell, your work group manager has his own office, which is a lot better than it seems, because it gives both an un-distracted place for both sides to vent/talk/collaborate to each other. FedEx employees are considered airline employees, so they get discounts on flights, hotels, and they get 95% off express shipping (so you can send your holiday gifts to family in Europe overnight for less than $10). FX Express employees are proud, unlike UPSers. FedEx employees do a lot less lifting, workloads aren't as high, and dispatchers ASK you if it's possible for you to do a second attempt, they don't TELL you to do a second attempt (unless you screwed up or it's a major client that's fuming). Although the pay isn't as good for couriers as UPS employees, inside employees actually make more due to their accountability on the air ramp.
There's a reason why FedEx express employees are not unionized. The corporate culture there rocks.
Despite this, there were still lifers in my station that would bitch and moan about how horrible the company is, and how they would go to UPS because they pay more and its better run. During these conversations, ex-UPS employees would laugh at them and tell them to go to brown, and the only reason why the ex-UPSers would do this is so they can acquire the lifer's gravy route (suburban residential, 70 stops a day... yes, seventy). Hell, downtown drivers that go into 6 towers would be insanely productive if they did more than 120 stops in a full day.
Oh and after having worked for FX, I've never heard the motto "change is good" ever used officially. The woman's complaining really has no basis, FedEx fires employees for just cause based on its policy manual that is as thick as a comprehensive dictionary. And if these employees were so wronged like the southern courier claims, there are routes that can be taken through the courts that these innocent employees never seem to take.
And she's a pretty senior employee, she's emp# 291xxx, in 2004 when I worked for them I was in the low 500xxx's, and now my buddy who just got hired is a 607xxx. It's pretty stupid of her to give her ID number out, too, considering ANY employee can log into the fedex intranet portal, type in her employee number, and see which station she works at, who her work group manager is, and the contact info for the station manager. So she's obviously not very bright.
With blue collar, wherever you go, it's always going to suck. You're at the bottom and you're always going to get a feeling like you're getting
on. Think is, you're one of the million, you're a cog in the wheel. And hey, when you're doing front line blue collar work, your satisfaction is going to be low. But when FedEx Express employees like this cow complain about injustice and greed, just like the fat kid in the suburbs whining about how horrible his life is as children his age in India are dying of malnourishment, it's just funny. They have no idea how good they have it.
FedEx Express has superior corporate culture and job satisfaction than UPS. FedEx hires the right employees for it company, not just anyone with a pulse. As a result, employees say hi to each other. People are a lot more collective there than in UPS' unionized environment where there's this "us vs. them" mentality. Employees say hi to each other. The company listens to their employees and their concerns. I've met the regional president on three separate occasions. If a center is too small, they'll just build a new one. We did after our industrial engineers found it ridiculous that we would have to bring package cars from the parking lot outside into the station after the first wave (the early am wave) heads out; they said every vehicle should be inside the building at the start of the sort, placing 30 boxes to go into a 2nd wave package car was considered needless and inefficient. Equipment is replaced frequently (read: no p5s built in 1985 with manual steering and transmission).Your work group manager (equivalent of an on-car sup) is (normally) nice and their raises are based on their employee satisfaction (amongst other factors). Hell, your work group manager has his own office, which is a lot better than it seems, because it gives both an un-distracted place for both sides to vent/talk/collaborate to each other. FedEx employees are considered airline employees, so they get discounts on flights, hotels, and they get 95% off express shipping (so you can send your holiday gifts to family in Europe overnight for less than $10). FX Express employees are proud, unlike UPSers. FedEx employees do a lot less lifting, workloads aren't as high, and dispatchers ASK you if it's possible for you to do a second attempt, they don't TELL you to do a second attempt (unless you screwed up or it's a major client that's fuming). Although the pay isn't as good for couriers as UPS employees, inside employees actually make more due to their accountability on the air ramp.
There's a reason why FedEx express employees are not unionized. The corporate culture there rocks.
Despite this, there were still lifers in my station that would bitch and moan about how horrible the company is, and how they would go to UPS because they pay more and its better run. During these conversations, ex-UPS employees would laugh at them and tell them to go to brown, and the only reason why the ex-UPSers would do this is so they can acquire the lifer's gravy route (suburban residential, 70 stops a day... yes, seventy). Hell, downtown drivers that go into 6 towers would be insanely productive if they did more than 120 stops in a full day.
Oh and after having worked for FX, I've never heard the motto "change is good" ever used officially. The woman's complaining really has no basis, FedEx fires employees for just cause based on its policy manual that is as thick as a comprehensive dictionary. And if these employees were so wronged like the southern courier claims, there are routes that can be taken through the courts that these innocent employees never seem to take.
And she's a pretty senior employee, she's emp# 291xxx, in 2004 when I worked for them I was in the low 500xxx's, and now my buddy who just got hired is a 607xxx. It's pretty stupid of her to give her ID number out, too, considering ANY employee can log into the fedex intranet portal, type in her employee number, and see which station she works at, who her work group manager is, and the contact info for the station manager. So she's obviously not very bright.
With blue collar, wherever you go, it's always going to suck. You're at the bottom and you're always going to get a feeling like you're getting
on. Think is, you're one of the million, you're a cog in the wheel. And hey, when you're doing front line blue collar work, your satisfaction is going to be low. But when FedEx Express employees like this cow complain about injustice and greed, just like the fat kid in the suburbs whining about how horrible his life is as children his age in India are dying of malnourishment, it's just funny. They have no idea how good they have it.
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breadbooze
Well-Known Member
I've been writing calls against my class B stock for the past two years, right now my cost basis for the shares is at $40 and dropping.
if you bought stock for $70 7 years ago and you sell it today at $70, you would actually be making money. The profit is whatever the hell inflation was
fedex has been so great because the business model has focused on specialization. do air freight, air freight, and only air freight. ok, do trade solutions, ground freight, and critical, and some supply chain, those are profitable, startup costs are low (especially if you buy the competition out), and yields are pretty high. and you may as well carry fedex's brand reputation over to those segments. there's no point why not.
now they go into ground, and they're realizing that ground is not profitable, and you can't apply the same HR principle to ground as you did to air. ground is physically demanding, and the only people that will do it for that rate of pay are either student whores or people with no social skills, while fx express hires purely on attitude and character, because the jobs are so un-demanding. turnover is huge in ground because the pay sucks. labor is always your number one cost, and that's going to go up when your work force gets unionized. it'll happen eventually. ground yields are tight enough as they are without a unionized work force under you.
because fx decided to go after ground market share, this has done nothing but give UPS the opportunity to attack fx's air market share. and ups' market share in air is growing hugely because of that. as a upser, i'm happy, because air is where the profit lays. people needing billion dollar documents to get there next day by 9, not the printer sending 50*30lb boxes of wal-mart flyers advertising $0.08 cents off haynes t-shirts that can get there whenever.
ups is in an advantage for the long term because the business model is solid: efficiency. everything's under one roof, so this makes ups' efficiency in comparison to fx go way up. yeah, corporate culture sucks, managers are dicks, but the pay is good, and ups is sticking to their model. fx will have many more challenges ahead.
i think fred should have done what southwest airlines did: focus on what you do best and stay with it. i'm not going to do what 75% of the members on here do and predict a doomsday situation where fedex will shut its operation down by end of FY07, but i will say that fedex would have been better off committing to their bread and butter: air express, not acquiring massive ground networks that are costly, have low yield, and do nothing but fragment the operation of the company.
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DS
Fenderbender
RockyRogue
Agent of Change
Agreed...FedEx tried to grow too fast, taking on waaaay too much debt to make it if there's a "bubble burst," and Wall St. takes a tumble. UPS is better off for many reasons, not the least of which is surviving so many other bursts. I read somewhere the FDX has more debt than many public companies in relation to some variables. I'm not an economics expert or a businessman, so the article didn't make much sense. I think I saw a couple great articles on here just in the last few weeks about Fred's finances. Good to see. -Rocky
SmithBarney
Well-Known Member
Yes but FedEx has been in china for 20 years...
don't you watch the commercials...
don't you watch the commercials...
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