FedEx Corp. truck drivers would be able to join unions more easily under legislation that the U.S. House began debating May 21.

Drivers in FedEx’s Express unit could vote locally to join unions under the plan rather than having to hold a national election to gain representation. The House approved similar legislation in 2007 that wasn’t taken up by the Senate.

The planned vote sets up a clash in the Senate between FedEx and larger competitor United Parcel Service Inc., which says the legislation would even the playing field with UPS’ union work force. UPS workers organize under the National Labor Relations Act, which allows local organizing. FedEx operates under the national organizing standard used for airlines.

”We expect the House will do the right thing by closing this unfair loophole,” Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said in a statement. ”FedEx Express workers have been deprived their right to form unions like workers at other package-delivery companies.”

The labor provision was included by Representative James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, in broader $70 billion legislation to finance the Federal Aviation Administration through fiscal 2012. The Senate hasn’t yet crafted its version of the bill.

”Americans shouldn’t tolerate more bailouts for companies that can’t compete,” FedEx spokesman Maury Lane said in an e-mail statement. ”Hopefully the Senate will understand the unintended consequences of these actions.”

The Teamsters have been trying to organize FedEx drivers for years. Atlanta-based UPS is the biggest employer of Teamsters, with about 240,000 workers. Pilots are the only major worker group represented by a union among FedEx’s 290,000 employees and contractors.

John Hughes
Bloomberg News

Transportation giant UPS said it’s studying the issue of federal bailouts for financially ailing trucking companies but wouldn’t comment directly on competitor YRC Worldwide’s request for $1 billion in federal aid.

“The bottom line is, we don’t comment on the financial difficulties of our competitors,” said UPS spokesman Norman Black. On whether the treasury department program which has so far has sent money to the banking, automobile and insurance industries should be extended to the trucking industry, “we’re still looking at that,” Black said.

UPS paid $6.1 billion to pay off its pension liability in the Central States multi-employer pension fund in 2007 that covered approximately 40,000 of the company’s 240,000 employees. UPS continues to pay into a new plan set up between the company and the Teamsters union and 20 other Teamster union pension plans.

One Wall Street analyst wondered, “If YRC is allowed to get $1 billion from TARP, is UPS allowed to get a $5.1 billion refund?”

  Here is a bit of an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It talks about the trust that comes with encouraging employees to be on a first name basis with management and it uses UPS as an example. I thought it was kind of interesting. Here is what it said.

        “A relaxed, open work atmosphere can encourage collaboration and a free flow of ideas, and some companies promote the use of first names and nicknames to help employees bond, as well as feel comfortable enough with their superiors to give honest feedback. Some companies have a written policy that all employees must be on a first-name basis.
        United Parcel Service Inc., Atlanta, has had such a rule since its first policy book, written by founder Jim Casey in 1929. Spokeswoman Diana Hatcher says the policy reinforces the democratic nature of the company, which often finds senior management in-house.
        “Our former CEO [Michael Eskew] began his job as an industrial engineer 34 years ago,” she says. “And he’s Mike. I wouldn’t dream of calling him anything else. It’s a reminder that a person who starts out as a seasonal employee could be our next CEO.”
        But the policy has ruffled some employees overseas. UPS has 400,000 employees in 200 countries, with more than 58,000 operating outside the U.S.
        Nonetheless, John Flick, director of international public relations at UPS, believes the guideline helps new workers feel confident making suggestions to management. “At first it’s a cultural coup,” Mr. Flick says. “But once they get over the initial shock, everyone I’ve dealt with has embraced it.”
        In some regions with strict social strata — such as India, China, Latin America and even Britain — he says the rule is a motivator for employees, enforcing the idea of work being rewarded with promotion. Mr. Flick says it also leads to innovation, as people aren’t afraid to speak up to management.”

        Doesn’t that sound great? I didn’t know that UPS had a written policy that all employees must be on a first name basis. I used to have a manager that would call me by my first name when in a good mood and by my last name when in a bad mood. I always knew what to expect just by hearing my name called.
        I also liked that part about how the casual approach leads to innovation because workers aren’t afraid to speak up to management. Wow, what planet do these people live on? It sure isn’t Planet UPS. In the trenches, where I lived and worked for 30 years, UPS didn’t want our input. They lived behind a big fence and written on that fence were the words: If workers were smart enough to have good ideas, they’d be in management.

One of the more intriguing chapters in labor history involves a decision by the Kellogg Company in 1930 to cut workers’ hours from a 40- to a 30-hour week. We could learn a thing or two from this example.

At the outset of the Depression, the company figured this would create 300 more jobs. Company President Lewis Brown also hoped it would give workers more time to spend with their families and to participate in their communities, and that it would lead to “higher standards” in school and civic life.

Workers did use their extra time off for gardening, visiting libraries, and family activities, according to reporters’ accounts, a 1996 book titled “Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day,” and a study by the US Department of Labor.  Most of the workers seemed to embrace the trade-off.

We have since come to accept a different idea, one that puts us in the role of consumers who aim to maximize our working hours and income. To what gain?

When the Kellogg experiment was launched, the country was already headed in a direction that one business leader of the time described as “the gospel of consumption.” Slowed by the Depression, the direction came into full flower after World War II, nurtured by an increasingly pervasive and sophisticated advertising industry. Now most of us have been thoroughly indoctrinated in that gospel.

What if, in this shrinking economy, we learned from the Kellogg example and instead of laying people off, US businesses first cut back hours?

Tim Holt

I’ve been in mangt with UPS for over twenty years and it has been a terrible time. The relentless conf calls and berating that mangt takes is not right. The demands on one’s time is ridiculous, the average Full time supervisor works 11-13 hours per day ? The last five years have been worst then ever because we have had such a brain drain of our solid leaders and now with battlefield promotions of people who have little or no success, we are being managed by a cast of idiots. Talk with a UPS mangt person and they will tell you their retirement date, why? because they can’t wait to leave. Most of us cannot afford to leave due to a pension at the end of our term. But there is hope, UPS paid out over 80 million in a major lawsuit with our part time supervisors. The lawsuit was about abusing this groups hours, (making them work 6-7 hours per day) but only paying them 5.5. This lawsuit has caused a fault line thru the higher ranks from Atlanta right down to us lowly Full time supervisor’s. We are threatened at least once a week about this lawsuit and to monitor our people’s hours. When in fact it was upper mangt who looked the other way on this practice. Although we are salaried employees I believe that there is a very strong under current brewing across the company that we should not be mistreated, berated or overworked to the degree that we have been and this lawsuit was the first opening for us. Want proof of this nasty enviroment? Ask the next UPS driver you run into about him or her joining the mangt ranks and be ready for their response of complete anger or a loud laugh. In the past we would have a bench of 2-3 employees per operating center waiting to become mangt. now there is hardly one per operating district? FYI, I am still employed at UPS, and I am not one of those “dirtbag” mangt people that upper mangt has looked down upon. I am fortunately still in good graces with upper mangt and I am looked upon as a leader for my operating center, so I do not post this material as a scorned, irrational revengeful person. I post this information because I want the other mangt people at UPS to stand up and help change our company back to the way it was before. As many of us say to each other everyday, “What was once a career, is now a job”. By the way it is peak delivery season and evryone is being e-mailed daily not to have their drivers go over the DOT rules of 60 hours, but how many mangt people are on the road more then 60 hours?
Bingblog

The End of Over/Under Allowed

I never thought I’d see the day where UPS has thrown the idea of Over/Under Allowed performance in the trash, but it’s happening with Telematics. Telematics is becoming a story of unintended consequences. With the company’s disdain for it’s employees, and their attitude that the drivers are all ripping off the company for time, they have come up with what they thought was a foolproof system to keeping everyone in line, and doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. What has really happened is they have taken a driver’s ability to hurry up away. The concept really never came to mind until I received a message the other day from my dispatch supervisor telling me he had dispatched me near an 8 hour day, and that I should, “be in somewhere near 8 hours”. It suddenly dawned on me that with Telematics it would take as long as it took, and that I had no control over time, space, and safety. I began to think about what Telematics doesn’t see. It doesn’t see the bunch of kids riding their bikes in a neighborhood. It doesn’t see the semi blocking the dock you need to get into to make a bulk stop. It doesn’t see the shiny road from an afternoon shower. All it can see is a bunch of numbers, and where you are at any given time. The new response from the driver to management will become
             “That’s how long it took!”
There will be no other answer. They will already have any information regarding the delivery. They will know how long you were there, (of course they won’t know why), they will know how fast you were driving, where you were before, where you went after, and how much time elapsed, but they will not know why. They will not know about the customer that is pissed about a mis-delivery, or a missing package. They will not know about the receiving clerk that has disappeared into the bathroom with a comic book while you need a signature for a hundred boxes. They will not know about the driveway you had to walk because the customer always parks in the turnaround. They will not know about the drunk going twenty in a fifty mile an hour zone or the lady on the cell phone blocking the right turn lane talking to her mother about her cheating husband. The fact is all of these things and so many others go on in a driver’s day to day life. Telematics cannot see any of these things. Of course in the “Olden’ Days” a driver could, and usually would, hurry up to make up the time these, and many more issues cost them. No longer! Hurrying up would mean driving faster, (not allowed). Hurrying up would mean running up the sidewalk instead of walking, (not allowed). Hurrying up would mean leaving the bulkhead door open for a few stops, (cardinal sin). Nowadays the driver can never look back. If they lose time, it’s lost forever. Management will see, and discipline, for any infractions that show up on Telematics. There will be no knowledge of why, just that it happened. Therefore there will be only one answer from any driver for anything!
                  “That’s how long it took!”