Who Is Serious About Unionizing?

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
A union drive cannot be led by one person - you know that. This is another thing that has gone on here for as long as I've posted and followed this forum, an absolute unwillingness among the readership to recognize what is needed when confronted with some basic facts. Then an attempt at deflection is made to divert any responsibility from themselves to do anything as a collective whole to change the situation.



Locations aren't successfully organized with one hand billing and one meeting. It takes multiple hand billings, multiple meetings. All of that costs MONEY to be done on a professional basis. Again, an attempt at deflection when confronted with the reality of the situation.

If a union is to commit to one hand billing and one meeting at/for each location (and that is IT), then they are flushing their money down the toilet - might as well not do it at all. They know that successful organizing takes months if not years in some industries - and that takes either professional organizers getting paid for putting in long hours in attempting to meet people in informal settings and dispelling the myths and fear about unions, or a number of amateur organizers who are willing to put in that time and get organization built.

The IBT isn't going to pay for organizers, and the Couriers of Express aren't willing to do the work themselves - so what is this persistent talk about, "We need a union"? Yes, you need a union, but given the REALITY as it exists, what the Couriers REALLY NEED is some commitment to do something to change the situation for themselves and not expect others to do the hard work for them. The best way to change the situation (given the reality), is to get the hell out of Express (what I did and many others are doing). For those who don't want to leave but want a union, what are they waiting for.....

It is well known that the IBT at this stage isn't going to spend much of anything on Express at this point (no point from past history and what is common knowledge out there). The Couriers (from what I've seen both when I was a Courier and here), are all talk and absolute no action. Why should any organization (union) commit itself to a long and expensive proposition (organizing drive), when all indicators (this place is a PRIMARY indicator whether you want to believe it or not), point to its failing no matter how much is committed to the effort?



What happened to all that talk about getting another union? I put up the list of the other unions for all to read and source for getting an alternative - only one poster came back with the IAM - that was a bust.

And if you really believe that the IBT is taking some sort of payoff from FedEx as a form of quid pro quo for not 'agitating' the Couriers of Express, then I don't know what to say. If you really believe that level of 'conspiracy' is going on, you'd best bail from Express PDQ - since the powers to be are REALLY playing you if that is the case.

I'm still seeing a lot of people "waiting for things to improve", which simply isn't going to happen. On one level, there are still the believers who think that all of the chaos is temporary and that the company is somehow going to "make it up" to them in the future. This is delusional, and frankly, pretty stupid.

Then there are the sheep, who are so timid and scared that they won't do anything. They just sit there and take it, apparently pacified by the fact that they just have a job. This is really sad, and it's very difficult to reach these people.

There are also what I call the "tough talkers". They talk a good game when management isn't around, but when it comes right down to it, they are inaction in action...they do nothing but talk. When management has a meeting and you can nail them to the wall, you could hear a pin drop.

Finally, there are the people who will actually sign a card and DO something. These are the employees who call BS on their games and WAD. They actively speak about unionizing and fighting for something better. This group is growing rapidly, but not quickly enough to get something going that has substance.

I totally agree with R1a that the Ops Managers know something is up, and a lot of them are jumping ship or downgrading back to courier. I personally know 3, one who has already stepped-down, and 2 that are going to. My guess is that they foresee an end of the policy that allows a manager to downgrade and get top rate. They also are seeing that managers who've already left are not being replaced, leading to very large work groups and a ridiculous span of control. All 3 of these people told me that the management job was "ruining their lives" and that they had to get out. I also know 2 SMs who want out entirely and are actively interviewing for other positions. They also know what's headed down the tracks, and they're smart enough to make a move.

When the last proposed revision to the RLA was successfully shot down, Fred knew there wasn't much holding him back. I think we've all seen the results of that freedom, and there is more in-store. Count on it.

When are all of you fence-sitters going to realize that you actually need to DO something other than wait around for me, R1a,or someone in your station to start taking action? I agree that the IBT is our only viable option, and until they see us fighting back, they're unlikely to enter the fray because they don't see any benefit to them. No, I don't like Hoffa, and yes, I have issues with the IBT, but they are the only game in town. They are actively organizing FedEx Freight, but they won't touch us until they think there is a reasonable chance of success.
 

Cactus

Just telling it like it is
We need one big time

Yes we do. I'll never change my opinon about that. At our station it seems like the midrange employees are the most stubborn, ignorant and bullheaded of the bunch. They make 3 or 4 dollars less an hour than employees at the top and they don't want a union. It's just easier they think to criticized top of range people. And that's the way Fred likes it. Divide and conquer.

R1A and Mr FedEx, I'm curious, was/is it like this at your station?
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
Yes we do. I'll never change my opinon about that. At our station it seems like the midrange employees are the most stubborn, ignorant and bullheaded of the bunch. They make 3 or 4 dollars less an hour than employees at the top and they don't want a union. It's just easier they think to criticized top of range people. And that's the way Fred likes it. Divide and conquer.

R1A and Mr FedEx, I'm curious, was/is it like this at your station?

I've got a mixture of all of the types. Most mid-range people at my station are pretty pissed-off.
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
I'd sign. Solidarity. BUT you guys just make fun of us. WE are actually your hidden alliegiance.

There is a zero chance of Ground drivers organizing. First, you are not FedEx employees. Second, anyone who said word one about a union would be fired by the contractor, undoubtedly at the direction of FedEx.
 

Ricochet1a

Well-Known Member
Yes we do. I'll never change my opinon about that. At our station it seems like the midrange employees are the most stubborn, ignorant and bullheaded of the bunch. They make 3 or 4 dollars less an hour than employees at the top and they don't want a union. It's just easier they think to criticized top of range people. And that's the way Fred likes it. Divide and conquer.

Divide and conquer was used in one of the last pay actions. Those in top half of range got one percentage raise, those in the bottom half of range got a lower percentage raise. The 'official' reason given was, 'To help those who have been with the company the longest, get to top out". Complete BS

The reason was to throw a bone to those in the top half of progression to placate them when Express was concerned that they'd agitate for unionization. If they were REALLY concerned with accelerating progression for this group of employees, they would've received another pay raise this past March. Didn't happen did it....

It was a bone thrown out to serve a specific purpose and FedEx got its money's worth.

R1A and Mr FedEx, I'm curious, was/is it like this at your station?

My station was what I'd call a 'suburban' station. It was outside the main metro area served by the ramp, yet close enough not to be a 'feeder' station.

The demographic of the Couriers was split into three basic groups:

1) Topped out career Couriers.

2) Mid ranged Couriers who thought they had a career, but who started to realize they were getting left behind.

3) Part-time Couriers with less than 7 years who had no intention of making Express a career.

The first group in my station was adamantly against any attempts at organization. They were of the, "I've got mine, too damn bad you won't get yours", crowd. They saw potential unionization as only giving them a potential for a modest increase in compensation with a significant chance of a strike being needed or Express pulling off some reorganization to avoid dealing with a union. They wanted no part of signing cards.

The second group was waiting with baited breath for unionization to happen, but they tended to want assurances in exchange for just signing a damn representation card. Some even wanted a written assurance from some source that their employment would be protected should they sign a card and station management found out.

The last group saw their time with Express as temporary. If a union drive got off the ground, they'd sign, but they weren't about to stick their necks out to get something that would be of benefit to those who hired in AFTER they quit and moved on with their life.

Basically EVERYONE was waiting for someone ELSE to get all the hard work done, then after it appeared it was going to be a 'Done deal', they'd step up and sign cards and join the bandwagon. Between the RLA and the incessant fear that exists in Express stations, Fred won before a bandwagon even got out of the garage.

At this stage, those who are denying that radical change is afoot are either in complete denial or completely blind. I do know as part of the budget cuts, that stations are cutting back their customer service hours (lobby being open later in the AM and closing earlier in the PM), and CSAs are having their hours slashed and in some instances, even displaced. Express wants people to go to Office and utilize the lower paid counter help there to get their shipments off and to receive their 'hold' shipments.

Fred isn't 'contracting out' Express customer service in an absolute sense, but he is getting the next best thing by gradually forcing people to use Office which pays its employees what would amount to 'contracted out labor wages' if it were done in a strict sense in Express.

And I still just don't see why people don't wake up and see what is happening before their eyes. The only thing I can think of is the 'snail analogy', if one looks at a snail constantly, it doesn't appear to move, but if one looks then turns away and looks again 10 minutes later, it is easy to see how far the snail has actually moved. Express is using the same technique. They are moving at a snail's pace to get to their eventual goal, but get there eventually they will.

I was told by one senior manager that the counter hours in Express stations will begin to resemble 'Bankers' hours' in a few years. The higher seniority CSAs are getting nervous, but they know that their hours will be preserved and the low seniority CSAs will get the majority of the hours reductions or even displaced. They are even looking at other positions (DG and SAAs), to try to eliminate or scale back houirs (turn full time SAA into a part-time position). Just as Couriers are being squeezed, those who work in the stations are getting their hours trimmed and are looking at ever more insane working conditions.

It was mentioned to me that one of the 'problems' they are running into (attempting to close early), is that all the door tags that the station uses (with preprinted hours) are preventing them from closing even earlier. So if your counter hours are being adjusted in your station, look for a complete new batch of door tags to be printed up and station management giving instructions to find any 'old' door tags to be turned in to be destroyed (they don't want customers getting pissed off coming in to get a package that has one set of counter hours listed, only to find the lobby closed when they get there). In many cases, they want to trim a full hour off BOTH the open time and close time (net reduction of 2 hours of counter service). This is all in line to push the delivery option to 'Hold at Office' to get packages out of Express stations and into Office locations to deal with.

The 'new' Express is being slowly rolled out - hope you like it or have plans to get out ASAP.
 

Ricochet1a

Well-Known Member
Why can't these card be sent to emails and signed electronically?

Short answer, the law...

Longer answer - the law is crafted by a consensus of lawmakers acting on the advice and pressure from interest groups. The requirement is deliberately in place to make it as difficult as possible to get the task accomplished. To be fair, technology has advanced considerably since the law was written. However, groups that serve the interest of large corporations are in no hurry for lawmakers to 'update' the law just to make it easier for labor to organize.

An old story about how bureaucratic inertia works...

France way back had a de facto restriction on the number of VCRs that could be imported from Asian countries (this is way back). They didn't restrict the number of imports with quotas or even high tariffs. They had a requirement that each and every machine had to be taken out of its box, hooked up and put through a 'test' to ensure its function before it could be released into the French consumer market (done under the guise of 'consumer protection').

OK... just have a lot of 'testers', and pass the cost of the 'testing' to the purchasers, right???

No... by bureaucratic procedure (DELIBERATELY established), there were only (if memory serves correctly), THREE testers for the entire nation of France. The bureaucracy was DELIBERATELY set up to restrict the flow of foreign produced VCRs into France, since these few testers could only 'certify' a small number of machines in a day (working French business hours). France was able to state it had 'open trade' and had no tariffs placed on foreign products to discourage their purchase by French consumers. By the REALITY was that only a handful of machines made it into the French market each day - therefore imposing a de facto trade barrier (while giving the French government 'clean hands' in trade negotiations).

The same sort of things go on in our laws and regulations. The ability for labor to organize is codified and the procedure is well known. The procedure ISN'T intended to facilitate easy organization by labor - to change the procedure requires a consensus of lawmakers and there are many who don't want to change the status quo. The RLA is DELIBERATELY intended to make it more difficult for labor in certain industries to successfully organize - which corporations utilize to discourage if not outright inhibit successful organization attempts.

The deck is stacked against you as an Express employee - and the hurdle to successfully organize has been raised so high by a combination of law and bureaucratic procedure, that the labor organization that would serve as the representative union (the IBT), has walked away from the task - believing that the cost to them to overcome all of these hurdles aren't worth its time, effort, capital and potential loss of political prestige for themselves.

So where does that leave the Express wage employee?

If they really want to organize, they need to do what I've been saying they need to do for quite some time now - build their OWN grassroots organization and get enough cards in (getting those organizers in each station is MORE important than just a few here and there signing cards at this stage - the ORGANIZATION must come first), then have the IBT realize that the 'heavy lifting' has already been done by the Couriers themselves. It would be left to the IBT to merely petition for an election (presuming a majority of Couriers have signed cards), and the rest would merely be procedural.

At this point, I can safely state that the Couriers will never go to the effort to organize themselves; they are waiting for someone else to do it for them. Technology has made it actually quite simple to build nationwide organization (internet and social networking), but the Couriers won't go to the trouble to learn about the procedure needed to change their situation, come together and create a national network, then have some leadership in that network advise on procedure to get out amateur produced literature and get rep cards out to be signed and sent in... all in accordance with the law covering labor organizing.

So the practical question facing the Express wage employee at this stage ISN'T, "When is a union going to come it?" It will never happen as long as the status quo exists. For the Express wage employee at this point, the relevant question is, "How long am I going to put up with this until I find other work?"

Since the Express wage employees won't come together and help themselves, the options left for the individual Express employee are Leave or Bendover - simple logic exercise at this point. Organize is simply not within the realm of remote possibilities at this point.
 

Hate 150lb Packages

Well-Known Member
MFE, When I first became employed with Ground, I asked about unions to the terminal manager/contractors, etc. I also asked other drivers. I had no idea what type of business model we fell under. At my old jobs (mostly state/federal govt.), there were always several different unions pushing information down your throat and it was kind of a given to join one. They never threatened to fire me. I never received any indirect scrutiny either, like surprise inspections, heavier than normal loads. At most, it just made them raise an eyebrow in curiosity. 99% of the people I encounter at Ground, even in lower management, can't even describe at a basic level what a union is. They aren't ignorant (well some are!), they are just people going about their daily lives with zero no regard for anything outside of basic survival like raising children, medical issues, mortgages, etc. I've always been an idealist so I am very pro Union. Ground is far too fractured, far too divisive, and of course not a part of FedEx so it will never see any type of across the board living wage increases, benefits, etc. I'm sure that's right where Fred wants it. I'm a huge proponent of grassroots movements, and if someone were to put forth an honest effort at organizing any part of this company, I'd have no problem supporting with my skills or money, however limited they may be!
 

Guapo

Well-Known Member
Since were supposedly under the rla, shouldn't we look to whoever represents railroad workers for our representation?
 

Ricochet1a

Well-Known Member
Since were supposedly under the rla, shouldn't we look to whoever represents railroad workers for our representation?

The RLA was passed in the mid-1920s to 'control' all the railway strikes which were threatening the economy of the nation back then. Striking workers at a few locations could and did shut down entire railroads, threatening the national economy. The Railway Labor Act was passed to solve the issue brought up by localized strikes in a national system.

When the airlines a number of years later were looking at labor 'difficulty', they were included under the RLA, since they had a national level service footprint and localized strikes could've shut down the entire system.

Federal Express managed to lobby to be included under the RLA (for its labor), since it declared itself to be a cargo airline and specializing in 'express' transit - therefore was given classification under RLA. Fred had to place some money in the right pockets though in order to pull this off.

The issue of Express being under RLA was called into question in the mid-90's after UPS entered into the overnight market in a big way, using non-RLA employees to move their freight for a portion of their movement. FedEx managed to fight to retain its RLA status, and consequently has made any attempts to organize Express by unions prohibitively expensive. Up until the turn of the last decade, Express paid well enough to keep a majority of wage employees not interested in organizing (even if they were presented an opportunity for a certification vote), so Express' having the RLA was more of a 'preventive measure', rather than something critical to its business model.

That has all changed with the ending of the Defined Benefit Pension Plan along with the deliberate stagnation of Express pay in an attempt to gradually narrow the differences between Express and Ground. FedEx wants Express to have that same profitability that Ground is experiencing, and it WILL do whatever it takes to achieve that.

The narrowing has taken place in compensation between Express and Ground since 2009 and continues to this day. About the only difference in compensation between a new Express Courier and a Ground driver now, is that the Express Courier has health insurance provided by their employer. The difference in wages (when one computes Ground driver pay for an hourly rate including overtime premium), between a new Express Courier and a Ground driver is only a few dollars an hour now. Compare this to the difference between an Express Couriers pay with 4 years in to that received by a UPS driver, and that slight difference between Ground and Express becomes almost inconsequential. Express is slowly adopting the ways of Ground, Fred is just moving at a snails pace in pulling it off.

For those who think that Fred will go one step too far - he's too smart for that. If back in 2008, he would've come out and announced the ending of the pension plan, a permanent freeze in real pay progression for all hourlies, a reduction in work hours, ending of split shift pay, increases in benefit premiums and reductions in coverage, presenting FedEx customers options to shift their freight over to Ground for a lower charge (taking volume out of Express).... all at once, even the most deluded Couriers would've been asking for representation cards. I knew back in March with the announcement of no pay raises that it was 'then' or never when it came to the Couriers ever taking it upon themselves to do the work of organizing. There was 2 weeks of collective outrage expressed here, but after that, posters started back into the same old refrain of looking for another union, then admitting in private that they weren't going to commit themselves to attempting to build organization, since it would take too much of their personal time and if or when their management found out - they'd be in jeopardy for their jobs.

You can look at the list of the unions I posted

List of trade unions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Labor unions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To put things succinctly, Express employees will never organize as long as the status quo exists in Congress and the Couriers refuse to do the necessary legwork themselves. Either learn to accept the way things are (and they are going to get a LOT worse), or start looking for other employment and get out as soon as you can; simple as that.

In all honesty, you as an Express Courier need to forget about any possibility of organization ever happening. The Couriers as a collective (even just looking at the posters here), WILL NOT go to the effort to build the NECESSARY organization to overcome the obstacle of the RLA - they just won't do it. Without organization, having a few individuals in a station here or there getting out rep cards won't do a damn thing to convince the Teamsters that 'life exists' in Express. The numbers game is against you at this point.

If Express were removed from under RLA and placed under NLRA like it should be, then there would be a chance to get the Teamsters interested in organizing a few stations in labor friendly areas, then using the 'Domino effect' to gradually get all of Express unionized. That ended election night 2010 when the Republicans took the House and the Democrats made it abundantly clear that they weren't going to expend any of their political capital to get Express removed from the RLA. There was a slim chance after that if the Couriers would've realized they needed to do the legwork themselves (why I continued to post), but at this stage it is abundantly clear that won't ever happen.

I keep on telling myself to put up a post with a header of "Final Posting", but I'm not quite able to do that yet- it is coming though. I do understand that getting on here and doing some 'venting' helps you cope with the situation you are in, but when you wake up the next morning, you still go in and move Fred's freight for him under increasingly maddening conditions. As a Courier, you NEED to make a decision to either stick it out till retirement or involuntary termination, OR commit yourself to finding other employment then once you do find it, turn in your uniforms and ID badge and tell your station management to SHOVE IT. Those are the options available to you. Having a union, any union, accept the cost of organizing the Couriers is simply wishful thinking at this stage - if not outright delusional thinking.
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
Since were supposedly under the rla, shouldn't we look to whoever represents railroad workers for our representation?

Railroad employees are represented by unions that would not be interested in us. Plus, Railroad Retirement is a very different set-up where union workers do not participate in Social Security.
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
The RLA was passed in the mid-1920s to 'control' all the railway strikes which were threatening the economy of the nation back then. Striking workers at a few locations could and did shut down entire railroads, threatening the national economy. The Railway Labor Act was passed to solve the issue brought up by localized strikes in a national system.

When the airlines a number of years later were looking at labor 'difficulty', they were included under the RLA, since they had a national level service footprint and localized strikes could've shut down the entire system.

Federal Express managed to lobby to be included under the RLA (for its labor), since it declared itself to be a cargo airline and specializing in 'express' transit - therefore was given classification under RLA. Fred had to place some money in the right pockets though in order to pull this off.

The issue of Express being under RLA was called into question in the mid-90's after UPS entered into the overnight market in a big way, using non-RLA employees to move their freight for a portion of their movement. FedEx managed to fight to retain its RLA status, and consequently has made any attempts to organize Express by unions prohibitively expensive. Up until the turn of the last decade, Express paid well enough to keep a majority of wage employees not interested in organizing (even if they were presented an opportunity for a certification vote), so Express' having the RLA was more of a 'preventive measure', rather than something critical to its business model.

That has all changed with the ending of the Defined Benefit Pension Plan along with the deliberate stagnation of Express pay in an attempt to gradually narrow the differences between Express and Ground. FedEx wants Express to have that same profitability that Ground is experiencing, and it WILL do whatever it takes to achieve that.

The narrowing has taken place in compensation between Express and Ground since 2009 and continues to this day. About the only difference in compensation between a new Express Courier and a Ground driver now, is that the Express Courier has health insurance provided by their employer. The difference in wages (when one computes Ground driver pay for an hourly rate including overtime premium), between a new Express Courier and a Ground driver is only a few dollars an hour now. Compare this to the difference between an Express Couriers pay with 4 years in to that received by a UPS driver, and that slight difference between Ground and Express becomes almost inconsequential. Express is slowly adopting the ways of Ground, Fred is just moving at a snails pace in pulling it off.

For those who think that Fred will go one step too far - he's too smart for that. If back in 2008, he would've come out and announced the ending of the pension plan, a permanent freeze in real pay progression for all hourlies, a reduction in work hours, ending of split shift pay, increases in benefit premiums and reductions in coverage, presenting FedEx customers options to shift their freight over to Ground for a lower charge (taking volume out of Express).... all at once, even the most deluded Couriers would've been asking for representation cards. I knew back in March with the announcement of no pay raises that it was 'then' or never when it came to the Couriers ever taking it upon themselves to do the work of organizing. There was 2 weeks of collective outrage expressed here, but after that, posters started back into the same old refrain of looking for another union, then admitting in private that they weren't going to commit themselves to attempting to build organization, since it would take too much of their personal time and if or when their management found out - they'd be in jeopardy for their jobs.

You can look at the list of the unions I posted

List of trade unions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Labor unions in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To put things succinctly, Express employees will never organize as long as the status quo exists in Congress and the Couriers refuse to do the necessary legwork themselves. Either learn to accept the way things are (and they are going to get a LOT worse), or start looking for other employment and get out as soon as you can; simple as that.

In all honesty, you as an Express Courier need to forget about any possibility of organization ever happening. The Couriers as a collective (even just looking at the posters here), WILL NOT go to the effort to build the NECESSARY organization to overcome the obstacle of the RLA - they just won't do it. Without organization, having a few individuals in a station here or there getting out rep cards won't do a damn thing to convince the Teamsters that 'life exists' in Express. The numbers game is against you at this point.

If Express were removed from under RLA and placed under NLRA like it should be, then there would be a chance to get the Teamsters interested in organizing a few stations in labor friendly areas, then using the 'Domino effect' to gradually get all of Express unionized. That ended election night 2010 when the Republicans took the House and the Democrats made it abundantly clear that they weren't going to expend any of their political capital to get Express removed from the RLA. There was a slim chance after that if the Couriers would've realized they needed to do the legwork themselves (why I continued to post), but at this stage it is abundantly clear that won't ever happen.

I keep on telling myself to put up a post with a header of "Final Posting", but I'm not quite able to do that yet- it is coming though. I do understand that getting on here and doing some 'venting' helps you cope with the situation you are in, but when you wake up the next morning, you still go in and move Fred's freight for him under increasingly maddening conditions. As a Courier, you NEED to make a decision to either stick it out till retirement or involuntary termination, OR commit yourself to finding other employment then once you do find it, turn in your uniforms and ID badge and tell your station management to SHOVE IT. Those are the options available to you. Having a union, any union, accept the cost of organizing the Couriers is simply wishful thinking at this stage - if not outright delusional thinking.

The "Express Carrier Exemption" has always been a very interesting part of this. You mentioned it, but didn't call it out by name. It's truly amazing what Smith has achieved while everyone except a few stood around scratching their ass and thinking they had a decent career.
 

Route 66

Slapped Upside-da-Head Member
Railroad employees are represented by unions that would not be interested in us..
Yes, unions which by the way, happen to be members in good standing of the UTWNBIWIRFEECA (Unions That Would Not Be Interested Whatsoever In Representing FedEx Employees Club of America)
 

MrFedEx

Engorged Member
Yes, unions which by the way, happen to be members in good standing of the UTWNBIWIRFEECA (Unions That Would Not Be Interested Whatsoever In Representing FedEx Employees Club of America)

BLET, UTU, and BRS are the 3 main unions. None have an interest in us. The IBT is the only real choice.
 

Ricochet1a

Well-Known Member
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) is actually a division of the Teamsters (IBT). That kind of takes them out of the running from the start.

The Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen (BRS) is a VERY small union (about 10,000 members), is functionally specialized and in no way would be able to to take on FedEx is ANY sort of organizing campaign. They are out.

The United Transportation Union (UTU) would be a potential candidate for the Ramp Agents, but again the issue of 'how big is the prize' comes into play regarding the Ramp Agents.

Any union knows whether they would try to organize the Couriers (as a craft) or a craft as small as the DG Agents, that FedEx would put up the SAME fight in order to keep ANY union out. This means that in order to break into a corporation's labor, a union will target the LARGEST craft within that corporation - in order to gain the most number of members with a single drive (biggest bang for the buck).

By default, this means that the Couriers are the craft which any potential union would target for organization - IF a union were to make any attempt at all. All the other crafts within Express are simply too small to even hope to justify the expense of attempting to battle the corporate machine of Express, all to gain a pitiful number of members if they were successful. Economics plays a BIG role in the decision of whether to take a shot at organizing a corporation's labor. This means that the Couriers would be it.

The IBT would like to 'pick off' the Express mechanics, but again, they aren't expending any real effort to do so - they are waiting for the mechanics to COME TO THEM, rather than going to the effort to really go out and GET THEM. If the mechanics were to come to the IBT, the IBT would gladly organize them - BUT, the IBT isn't going to spend anything to accomplish that though. The same goes for the Couriers - if they were to basically come to the IBT ALREADY organized (organizers in 400+ of the over 600 stations, with signed rep cards from 10-15,000 Couriers already in), then the IBT would gladly step in, move the proverbial ball over the goal line and petition for a vote.

Since the Couriers won't do the legwork to get themselves organized, it comes down to which union is large enough to even be remotely interested in bearing the cost of organizing the Express Couriers. By matter of economics, the default is the IBT. There simply isn't any other union that is large enough to even HOPE to take on the union busting machine of Fred. Even the IBT has decided that the 'prize' of organizing the Couriers isn't worth the expense in capital or potential loss of political prestige should they be unsuccessful.

So the waiting game goes on. The Couriers are waiting for someone else to step in (won't happen), the IBT is waiting for the Couriers to make up their mind that they are really fed up and start doing some old fashioned organizing themselves. The IBT isn't going to move, and the Couriers have made it abundantly clear that they expect someone else to do the work for them - so the status quo continues. There won't be any union within Express and Fred will continue to slowly transform Express into something which will look remarkably like Ground in terms of employee compensation - with the only difference being the type of freight moved between the two.
 

Ricochet1a

Well-Known Member
Gee Whiz...now I'm depressed after reading all this.

Well, when one learns just how much they are getting screwed, it can be depressing.

The key is to use that knowledge and do something about your situation.

Fred may be fine with you going through life being, "fat drunk and stupid".... (drunk on your own time), but it won't get you far....

[video=youtube;mkoPq5AOCOA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkoPq5AOCOA[/video]

Educating yourself as to what is going on and then TAKING ACTION is what this is all about. Your fellow Couriers AREN'T going to go to the effort to organize, so you'd best start making plans on an alternative career - or learn to like working on Fred's plantation. Simple as that...
 
Top