I think that's taking things a little too personally. It's about the money. If getting SPH up and production levels up means that FDX can engineer full time positions for couriers and reduce the number of part timers they have to put on the road to cover service, maybe that would be to their interest. If, on the other hand, Express couriers can't rise to that level, then attrition will be the course.
This is the one thing the Ground types don't get about Express, and why they aren't qualified to make observations about Express practices based upon their Ground experience.
If Express sent out its Couriers in the AM, with NO INTERFERENCE from dispatch, they would get off their volume in a very "productive" manner and return to station in a predictable (anticipated clear time) manner. The SPH statistic would be a valid measure of productivity in that circumstance.
It doesn't work that way in Express though.
Couriers get messages from dispatch to make a same day reattempt for a delivery which they tried to get off less than an hour previous. Customers call the number on their door tags and want a same day reattempt. Express still doesn't have the 'nads to tell customers, "You missed our delivery attempt, you can come into the station after the time specified on the door tag, or wait until tomorrow for another attempt." So dispatchers send out a message, make a reaattempt on so and so package.
This causes the Courier to "break trace", drive back to the location, make the attempt, then drive back to where they left off in their stop order. In many instances, Couriers take upwards to 20 minutes (sometimes even more), driving back to that location, making the delivery, then driving back to where they left their planned route (Express routes cover a larger footprint than either UPS or Ground routes). That just slaughters any SPH calculation. The report at the end of they day shows all that time spent in "on-road", so the overall statistic FALLS due to that 20 minutes spent getting off ONE STOP.
The "solution" is for the Courier to enter a "shuttle" time code, to get the time driving to and from the location outside of base pattern to not count againt their SPH statistic - but most station managers WON'T allow Couriers to do this.
Then Express expects it delivery Couriers to get early closers (pickups which close before the PM routes hit the road), The same situation arises for the delivery Couriers - they have to stop making deliveries, drive to the early closer, then head back to where they interrupted their "normal" route. Precious time is spent in doing this single stop. Then in many instances, customers like this either don't have the package ready to ship, or need to fill out an airbill (they are too damn lazy to go to a dropbox or Office location and get their shipment off there). The Courier has to cool their heels, waiting for the customer to complete the shipment, then process it, then get back to where they left off.
Then if a Courier in an adjacent route area gets slammed, dispatch will try to get the Couriers in the surrounding areas to "help out". This does provide service coverage, but the SPH statistic again gets slaughtered - there is a lot of time spent driving into another area, only to get a handful of stops. There is no "end of day adjustment" to SPH stat to account for all this non-productive driving around.
You can call it service, but it is completely INCOMPATIBLE with attempting to measure "productivity" with a SPH statistic. Express is trying to have it both ways, provide service while pushing Couriers like robots. You are hearing about the results of that idiotic management style.
This is also why Express ground ops could NEVER become a contract operation. Trying to meet service expectations with a straight jacket SPH expectation won't work. Express KNOWS this, thus why it maintains the RLA and non-outsourced ground operations. This should tell you (the Couriers) something about what is happening right now. Express knows it can't really get it both ways, yet it appears that it really thinks it can (at least to those in ops). There is a method to Express' madness - and the Couriers are caught squarely in the middle of it.