The Teamsters unmask FedEx’s union-busting CEO in a video that shows the foolishness of his claim that drivers are pilots.
Fred Smith, who was on John McCain's short list to be vice president, has been telling Congress that his FedEx Express employees should be classified as airline workers under U.S. labor law. That’s because he desperately wants to hang on to a special favor he received 14 years ago – legal obstacles for his employees to join a local union.
In 1996, Smith lobbied for – and got – an exemption from the labor law that governs every other package delivery company in the United States.
As a result, FedEx is covered by the Railway Labor Act, which applies only to airlines and railroads. So even though FedEx drivers pick up and drop off packages exactly the same way as every other delivery driver in America, they are treated legally as airline pilots.
The Teamsters, who represent 250,000 UPS workers, want FedEx to compete on a level playing field. We think it’s only fair that FedEx workers receive the same legal treatment as UPS workers.
The fight has moved back to Congress, where the House has passed a bill that takes away Fred Smith’s special favor and puts FedEx workers where they belong – under the National Labor Relations Act. The bill still has to be reconciled with the Senate version. Smith has launched a multi-million lobbying campaign to make sure the final version of the bill allows him to continue his anti-worker practices.
Today the Teamsters launched a campaign of their own – a viral video and Web advertising effort that shows exactly why drivers aren’t pilots. The www.fedexdriversarentpilots.com website points out that FedEx employs more than 90,000 drivers (not pilots) who log nearly 165 million miles on the road (not the air).
Fred Smith is trying to hide his crude hostility toward union workers by claiming UPS is seeking a "brown bailout." Only in the "up-is-down" world of Washington, D.C., could such an assertion be viewed as plausible. The late, great Ted Kennedy understood what Fred Smith was after 14 years ago when he first got his special deal in a funding bill. Kennedy tried to block the bill.
"Federal Express will have another weapon to turn its back on the legitimate rights of workers and workers’ rights," Kennedy said back then. "And that finally is what this is all about."