It takes time to undo the years of brainwashing bro. I have never worked at a place where the employees are so beaten down that they do not want to even whisper the word union. But things are changing and attitudes are changing. I have said it before it is going to take some time. Persistence and a willingness to stick it out to the end is what will bring a unionized FedEx to fruition.
If Express were under NLRA rules - local organizing would work just fine. The RLA changes all of that.
Then to make it worse, the ONLY union that potentially could organize Express Couriers - has made a decision to cut and run; having made the decision that they could never hope to get 50% of Couriers to sign rep cards even if they were to put forth the significant resources to even try.
I put up the list of other unions almost 2 weeks ago (since everyone seems to be holding their noses at the prospect of IBT organizing)- absolutely NO posting regarding someone calling other unions. NOTHING. I at least expected a few posters to write that they did call a couple of unions and were told in so many words, "No thanks". Nothing, absolutely nothing.
If the Express Couriers want the benefits of being organized - the posters to this forum (whether you want to believe it or not, they are the 'leadership' of a potential grassroots movement), are going to have to do the work and not just sit back, post and lurk and hold out hope that someone else out there is going to do it for them. There is no one else out there, YOU are it.
From the private mail communication that has come into certain individuals here - there is no real indication that any real commitment by ALL the Express Couriers who post and lurk here to take action (getting out rep cards and attempting to establish 'network'), will ever occur. There is lots of sympathy, a FEW who are doing work in their stations, but a FEW stations with people getting out rep cards won't do a damn thing in the face of the RLA. It has to be a MASSIVE grassroots level push - something with the urgency of a tsunami sweeping across Express stations to even hope to succeed. That hasn't materialized.
There is only ONE slim chance of organizing Express Couriers - for the Couriers to develop a private network to establish organizers in as many stations as possible, then have those station level organizers get out rep cards and encourage their coworkers to get them sent in. All in the seemingly vain hope of getting the IBT to reconsider its position vis-a-vis Express Couriers and start to take over organizing and work with the station level organizers and get enough cards signed to get a petition to have a vote with the NLRB. I illustrated what would be needed in another thread - something with that level of urgency is the ONLY thing which will succeed. Small, uncoordinated local level attempts will just be quashed by the anti-union hit team should district management inform Memphis that they, "have a problem".
Memphis is well capable of sending out their hit team to deal with the occasional "flooded basement" (station with organizing activity). What they are not equipped to deal with is a tsunami sweeping across all stations nearly simultaneously. They can't handle that (I tried to illustrate that in my hypothetical narrative).
That is why if the Couriers are EVER to organize, they are going to have to commit to developing network, getting cards out, expanding network and accepting some level of organization upon themselves and not behave like a herd of cats. From the posting activity that has gone on in the past couple of weeks combined with the private mails that have gone around - 'it' isn't there and most likely never will be.
I had some hope that Fred's decision to not give you pay raises would snap you (in the plural) out of your fear and inaction and actually cause that tsunami to begin to form. Hasn't happened. At this point, I'm left wondering if there is ANYTHING which would snap the Couriers (the entire company pool) out of their collective inaction and create that tsunami. But to shift to another metaphor - I'm thinking that Fred is just too adroit in slowly cranking up the heat on that frog in the kettle. The frog will end up being cooked long before it realizes its time to jump out of the kettle.
