The courier who is the lead plaintiff (Clausnitzer) lives in Florida and used to post on another site that I no longer patronize because it is a front for lawyers seeking cases. I've communicated with him in the past, and the Age Discrimination class action is still in the pipeline. In fact, I believe that the US Supreme Court had to rule whether or not the suit could even be brought because it hadn't been filed withing the usual required timeframe. FedEx lost, and as far as I know, the suit is proceeding. According to him, this is why Best Practices disappeared. FedEx supposedly designed the whole BPP program as a means of ridding the company of older couriers who couldn't make the numbers, hence the age factor inherent in the suit.
Many of us here have long thought that FedEx does it's best to eliminate older workers who are at top of range and more likely to be injured or out with health issues.
Is Clausnitzer's case still going on? All the info I can find on it is at least a couple of years old and I think it was originally filed back in 2006.
I don't condone discrimination of any type and if a manager or managers are guilty then they deserve what they get. Whether or not FedEx actively engages in age discrimination is what the courts will decide (or possibly already have decided). Personally, I haven't seen it but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
Best Practices hasn't disappeared. Not sure where you got that idea from. Possibly your station doesn't do a good job of using it, but it's still there. The funny thing about that is that BP methods are designed to make things consistent throughout a company (FedEx isn't the only company that has best practices). They are designed to make a procedure or process efficient and minimize the work (effort) required to do that procedure or process.
I think the irony of the whole thing is that the law says you cannot treat people over 40 differently as that is discrimination. So you treat them the same as the people under 40 and then you get someone over 40 saying I cannot do those things and I want you to treat me differently.
I would bet that we all know older couriers in our stations that can run rings around the newer and younger couriers. I think the reality of it is just that as we get older some of us have bodies that deteriorate quicker than others. Unfortunately, that puts some people in a position where they simply cannot do the job the same way they used to. You cannot have different goals and standards based on peoples ages so you get caught in a catch-22.
As for eliminating older workers, in the last year I attended the 25 year purple celebration luncheon and I was amazed at how many people there were just in my district that had 25 years of service. If FedEx is eliminating them, they're not doing a very good job.