FedEx fights union law
09 / 06 / 2009
FEDEX is preparing a multi-million-dollar marketing campaign to fight against a change in labour law. If the change goes ahead then it will allow FedEx’s workers to form unions more easily than before.
Currently FedEx archaically comes under the jurisdiction of the National Railway Act instead of the National Labor Relations Act. The former means that the workers can only unionise nationally while the latter means they can form unions one terminal at a time.
FedEx, which claims its rival UPS is behind change, says that more unions will mean more strikes causing shipping rates to “skyrocket”.
“It’s nothing but a backdoor attempt to make us less reliable,” said Maury Lane, FedEx’s director of corporate communications. “It’s a legislative bailout for a profitable company.”
“America relies too much on the reliability and dependability of its overnight-delivery network, and we can’t allow this bailout to pass only because UPS can’t compete in today’s marketplace,” Lane wrote.
FedEx has threatened to delay its purchase of 30 new Boeing 777 freighters if Congress goes ahead with the proposed reclassification.
