From threatening to not buy American made planes if they don’t get their way, to one of their bigshots announcing that they will destroy (yes i said destroy) members of congress, the FedEx “hissyfit” I referenced in my previous post continues over the house passage of the FAA Reauthorization Act which includes an ammendment that would take FedEx out from under the Railway Labor Act and place them under the National Labor Relations Act. Now they are threatening a Jihad against UPS, who they accuse of conspiring with the evil Teamsters union (bwahahahahaha) to make it easierfor FedEx workers to join a union.They seem to be willing to spend millions on fighting the legislation and punishing those who support it even though they have been forced to lay off hundreds of employees and slash pension benefits.
For those who are not fluent in labor law, FedEx ‘s air delivery operations are currently covered under the Railway Labor Act which covers airlines and well railroads. Under the RLA, if the workers choose to organize, they would have to organize nationwide as a single unit. And if that doesn’t make it hard enough to organize, anyone who does not vote gets counted as a no vote. Needless to say this has given FedEX an advantage over it’s workers who see the advantages their counterparts at UPS have due to union representation. While I am usually not in a habit of quoting UPS corporate types this says it all:
Malcolm Berkley, a spokesman for UPS, read a statement: “FedEx’s apparent attempt to raise the noise level here doesn’t change the facts. It would appear that FedEx is preparing to spend millions of dollars trying to convince Congress that a FedEx driver delivering a package is different somehow than a UPS driver delivering a package. The packages aren’t delivered by airplane, and we don’t think FedEx can fool Congress about that.”
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