uniteatups.org.uk

FedEx’s has launched a multi-million dollar PR campaign to stop federal legislation that would make it easier for drivers and package handlers to unionize.

But experts say the campaign is misleading and may backfire.

FedEx is up in arms because the House of Representatives approved a bill that would bring the company under the National Labor Relations Act which would give employees there the same right to unionize as they have at UPS.  

In response to the bill, FedEx launched a PR campaign accusing UPS of taking a government bailout.   

FedEx’s campaign comes complete with a website called BrownBailout.com that accuses UPS of “quietly seeking a Congressional bailout designed to limit competition for overnight deliveries.”  

But as the New York Times points out, “The real issue here is not government-supplied cash for UPS., but the labor laws under which UPS and FedEx are classified.”

The legislation, which now must pass the Senate and be signed by President Obama to become law, would simply put FedEx under the same federal labor law as UPS. Hardly a bailout!  

The bill currently before Congress would switch FedEx to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Act from the National Railway Labor Act. The Railway Labor Act allows workers to organize, if all workers vote on a union at the same time. That has been a roadblock to unions that could not afford nationwide organizing campaigns.

FedEx's nearly 5,000 pilots are the company's only employees that currently have a union. The company has a total work force of 290,000. UPS has about 425,000 workers; more than half are union members. Most of UPS' unionized workers are members of the Teamsters.

UPS Inc., the world's largest shipping carrier, says it has acquired a unit of a European firm that has been its middleman for small package delivery in Slovenia for 18 years.

UPS is implementing new technology that allows management to monitor drivers like never before--beginning with an upgrade to the DIAD software and culminating in telematics, a new system that amounts to a daily electronic OJS.

UPS’s new spyware began with an upgrade to the DIAD software that the company calls ODSE (On Demand Services Enhancement). The software allows management to monitor drivers’ routes on a computer screen in the center. Management can call up a snapshot of the entire center or any individual or combination of routes.

The company says that the technology gives the center better information when dispatching a driver for a pickup or sending a driver to help out another driver. But many Teamsters have had management use ODSE to question them about their route, leaving trace, etc.

ODSE provides both more and less information than GPS. The system lets management monitor recommended trace, service levels of packages on the truck, the number of packages and stops delivered, the location of on-call air and one-time pick-ups and more.

But all this information is based on the DIAD, not GPS. Management cannot call up the actual location of a package car, just the location that was last entered on the DIAD.
 

UPS and its Louisville-based pilots union have signed an agreement that could ward off indefinite layoffs for about 300 pilots.

UPS Airlines' roughly 3,000 pilots have until 8 a.m. Friday to volunteer for some cost-saving steps and until Tuesday morning to sign up for others, including job sharing and giving up some sick-time credits.