<p>Anyone else think the FedEx ad campaign protesting a “Brown Bailout” is too misleading/wrong, even for lobbying? </p>
<p>From what I read, the resolution that they’re protesting would allow local unionization of FedEx workers in the same way that UPS workers are allowed to unionize nowadays. Since the bill would put FedEx and UPS on equal grounds (and help out UPS), they’re calling it a UPS bailout.</p>
<p>Seems like a loose association that’s just trying to stick the term “bailout” onto the resolution. What do others think: are the facebook/google (and CC) ads proclaiming Brown Bailouts crossing the line?</p>
<p>If you can’t beat 'em, have Congress hobble 'em. That’s the motto of some in corporate America, and Exhibit A might be United Parcel Service’s campaign to get Washington to impose its labor woes on rival Federal Express. This would be one more union bailout at the expense of business competition and economic efficiency.</p>
<p>House Transportation Chairman James Oberstar (D., Big Labor) last year slipped 230 words into a spending bill that would make it easier for the Teamsters to unionize FedEx. This ambush was included at the urging of UPS, which has been saddled with the Teamsters for decades and wants FedEx to feel its pain.</p>
<p>Since FedEx began its Express letter and package service in 1971, its overnight delivery has been regulated under the Railway Labor Act. Congress created that statute to discourage labor strikes and “avoid any interruption to commerce.” It viewed airlines and express-shipping companies as bedrocks of commerce and deliberately put them under the law. As FedEx delivers 85% of its parcels by air, many of them time-sensitive packages that enable a modern economy, it rightly belongs under the railway act.</p>
<p>This classification riles the Teamsters because the railway act requires unions to organize at a national, rather than local, level. FedEx employees have rejected every Teamster organization attempt. Of its 125,000 employees, about 4,500 belong to the Air Line Pilots Association. The rest are nonunion.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, UPS delivers 85% of its packages by trucks and is regulated under the more union-friendly National Labor Relations Act. Its operations are manned by 240,000 Teamsters, whose walkouts and strikes play havoc with its business model. In 1997 the Teamsters waged a 15-day strike at UPS estimated to have cost the economy $15 billion. UPS paid $6 billion in 2007 to gain some control over ballooning Teamster pensions, and its liabilities caused a downgrade last year in its long-term debt rating.</p>
<p>UPS has long tried to reclassify under the railway act. “Provisions of the RLA, including mandatory mediation of disputes, will provide our customers with a sense of stability, which our competitors are able to offer,” said the company in 1995. Yet every time Congress or the National Labor Relations Board take up the issue, the Teamsters convince their Washington patrons to tank it.</p>
<p>UPS has now moved on to Plan B, which is to stick FedEx with the same union payroll. The House bill would move all of FedEx’s employees, save pilots and aircraft maintenance technicians, under the National Labor Relations Act, allowing the Teamsters to organize locally. The Teamsters are also pushing Senate Democrats to adopt Mr. Oberstar’s House provision in their funding for the Federal Aviation Administration.</p>
<p>This is political favoritism at its worst, benefiting only UPS and the Teamsters while raising transportation costs across the economy. FedEx has been able to break a decades-long UPS monopoly in parcel delivery, reducing costs for millions of customers. The competition is healthy for everyone, and the best way for UPS to regain its edge is to get out from under its current rules or persuade the Teamsters that they’ll lose their jobs if they won’t change. This Teamsters bailout is worth a GOP filibuster if it ever makes it to the Senate floor.</p>
<p>Actually, though, this would be government not meddling anymore: they formerly gave FedEx special privileges that prevented its workers from unionizing. This privilege would be lifted if the so called “Brown Bailout” goes through…</p>
<p>So really the supposed bailout is just government shifting its regulations on air transportation.</p>
<p>Has FedEx been providing an awful working environment? Whole Foods (where I work) isn’t unionized, and the CEO is pretty anti-union but it regularly ranks in the Best Companies to Work For, and I think it’s a pretty great place to work. Employees here seem a lot happier than employees at Giant or Safeway where they are able to join the union.</p>
<p>You don’t think FedEx employees should have the right to unionize locally? </p>
<p>Whether FedEx is a good place to work is irrelevant. They’re trying to keep their unique privileges with a very misleading ad campaign. If unions are inefficient, employers should stop dealing with them. There shouldn’t be some federal ban.</p>
<p>It’s pretty embarrassing that CC is running it on these forums.</p>
<p>^^^You can’t fire an employee because they want to join a union. Once they form a union and decide to collectively bargain, you can decide not to sign any contracts like you said…But then you have a bunch of workers that you can’t fire but aren’t willing to take the terms you offer them. You either have to hire new workers, close the plant, or work out an agreement. This is oversimplified–there’s way more rules–but it’s generically true.</p>
<p>Companies don’t run if they’re consistently not profitable: that’s an incentive for union workers to make reasonable demands. You don’t have a working labor force if you don’t sign any contracts with the union: that’s an incentive for employers to bargain. </p>
<p>FedEx want to maintain its special consideration using misleading advertising.</p>
<p>I’m not pro-union, personally. It’s basically raising wages the same way OPEC raises oil prices. But that’s not the issue.</p>