Easy to see what's in store for contractors . More production, more stops and more boxes to be done in a day.....but just exactly who's going to do it and for how little does Raj think they'll do it for? Perhaps Raj still thinks he's in India. A country with no national minimum wage. The individual states set the wage which runs from the US equivalent of $2.43 to $6.35....PER DAY. And if he believes that both the only pathway to success and the only measure of success is people being worked to death for scraps and peanuts and treated in a manner very similar to India's Shudras then years of instability and conflict are in the offing. And Ground contractors stand a good chance of becoming Ground Zero.
Although well-worn, you bring up a good point.
The usual problem of "nobody" wanting to do a crap job.
The skilled working-class got the shaft because over the past four decades, much of our manufacturing has gone to other countries.
Stinging from this, the mantra became "if you don't go to college, you'll be a ditch-digging loser."
The result was that many people went to college so they wouldn't become ditch-digging losers.
Then the educated college types got the shaft when very many of their cushy, high paying tech jobs were sent to other countries, and/or they were replaced by immigrants with work visas.
I can only see two possible solutions to FedEx's problem, and robotics are too far off for this.
Significantly raise the pay for employees and contractors. By doing that, FedEx will be admitting to everybody involved that they were wrong and stupid. This also gives their current contractors a tiny shred of power.
Or bribe some politicians and have them declare a "transportation emergency" or other such nonsense, to enable the importation of transportation work visas and emergency waivers cuz there's a "labor shortage, we can't find any qualified labor, and Americans are on drugs and don't want to work."
They've been itching to pull a stunt like that for years.