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Who Is Serious About Unionizing?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ricochet1a" data-source="post: 1164824" data-attributes="member: 22880"><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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). </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ricochet1a, post: 1164824, member: 22880"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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