For Whom The Bell Tolled |
Just about everyone with a pulse from my generation (baby-boomers) has an opinion about the Vietnam War. I personally scrupulously avoid getting involved in discussions about that war because I find the subject to be too emotionally charged. However, as many people believed the war was unnecessary and that those who gave their lives did so in vain, I couldn't help but draw a parallel between that body of opinion and the meaning of the recent reversal of the JKT policy. Understand that I would never trivialize the memories of my fallen comrades-in-arms, nor am I in any way comparing the sacrifices those who served in that war made to someone who loses propay or loses their job! I am simply stating that the reversal of the JKT policy, in effect, made the consequences many of our coworkers, and most tragically, many of our former coworkers, paid as a result of the old policy as futile as Robert McNamara's book characterized the sacrifices those of us who served in Vietnam made! Given the parallel, perhaps we should consider creating a symbolic memorial wall of our own to remind each other of everyone who paid a price for an ill-conceived and poorly-executed policy that has now been relegated to the trash heap of our corporate history....
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Last Tuesday morning, when my manager first told me of the changes in the JKT (job knowledge test) policy, I was absolutely stunned! So many different thoughts rushed into my mind at one time that I wasn't quite sure how to feel about the news. One second I felt full of vindication for having so vehemently condemned the JKT policy both on this site and verbally to any manager or hourly employee who stood still long enough to hear me rant about its unfairness. The next moment I was full of anger and indignation when I thought about Darrel Anderson and the hundreds, if not thousands of FedEx employees who have either lost their jobs, lost many a night's sleep in utter anxiety or have lost God only knows how much money in propay as the slashing blade of the JKT policy ravaged our ranks over the years!
Once I had time to absorb and digest the news, emotions gave way to analysis. As I mulled my own ideas over in my mind, my assessments were augmented by the opinions of my peers. The station was buzzing with discussion of the policy change for the next few days and it soon became obvious that one theory had arisen as the most widely embraced. It came as no surprise that this theory presupposed the company had been backed into a corner rather than having anything whatsoever to do with the rosy explanation we were offered in the official corporate memo. After either seeing, hearing, or experiencing the seemingly endless array of injustices FedEx management has in its repertoire, the notion that it could do such an about-face where a policy as entrenched and pivotal as the JKT policy was concerned without a gun sticking in its corporate ribs was an idea nobody, including myself, even briefly entertained! Cynicism, it seems, is alive and well at FedEx.
The theory goes that someone finally found a lawyer with enough savvy in labor law to sue the bejesus out of FedEx over the ramifications the test had on their career with the company and won a big-time settlement! This theory seems entirely plausible. After all, people have often sued both corporations and government agencies over alleged unfairness in pre-employment testing procedures and have routinely won such cases. Therefore, it isn't at all unreasonable to entertain the notion that FedEx's number may have indeed finally come up in the judicial system.
Another explanation for the policy change is that the economy played a part in FedEx's abrupt policy u-turn. I have heard from more than one geographical location that FedEx is having a difficult time filling job vacancies! FedEx isn't the only corporation that is experiencing such difficulties either. Jobs are abundant just about everywhere in our current robust economy. Having kept its wages frozen for so long (starting wages at FedEx are still only pennies from where they were a decade ago) the gap between FedEx's starting rate and those in less physically and mentally demanding industries has steadily narrowed to the point where coming to work for FedEx isn't nearly as attractive an alternative as it was in 1987. Also, when economic times are good and unemployment is as low as it is now, the pool of available labor shrinks dramatically. Corporations cannot be as particular as to who they hire when so many employers are fishing from a shrinking pool of available workers.
It is almost universally accepted as truth among FedEx employees that our management remains indifferent to problems unless and until they can discern dollar signs associated with the problem. Until they can be shown a way to squeeze a buck out of somewhere, they'll usually remain indifferent to a problem regardless of the human ramifications it may entail. There's no doubt in my mind that one of the foremost reasons our former JKT policy was initially embraced by the company honchos was because it was such a slick way of screwing people out of propay as well as thinning out the ranks of older employees who might be nearing pension eligibility. After all, it's a well known scientific fact that our brains age and we become less sharp mentally as we grow older just as other parts of our bodies age and become less strong or flexible. What better way to avoid paying full pensions than to have a device in place to take advantage of our human frailties?
Given that the old JKT policy was such a financial windfall for the corporation, why then would FedEx abandon that policy? The only possible reason is that the policy had somehow become more of a liability than an asset to the company. In leaner economic times, it didn't hurt the company to be frivolous with the careers of its employees because they were so easily replaced. So tossing someone like Darrel Anderson out on his backside even though he had done his job to the complete satisfaction of his customers for nearly two decades was something the company wouldn't bat an eyelash over doing. Now, however, with fewer qualified people in the job market to readily step in to fill a tried and true employee's shoes, it may suddenly be that FedEx has been forced to see the utter economic folly of slamming the door on an employee's career when he or she has consistently demonstrated they are fully capable of doing the job to the customer's satisfaction!
You'll note that I used the phrase "economic folly" because I don't believe for a moment that FedEx management either realized or cared about the unjust nature of the old JKT policy. Regardless of whether it was legal pressure or economic necessity that precipitated this policy change, one thing we can all be certain of is that fairness had no hand in management's deliberations in reaching their decision...
Is the level of cynicism apparent in these theories unwarranted? If you think so, maybe you ought to take a manager aside and ask his or her opinion on the subject... A coworker told me that even his manager pointed out that the company memo announcing the policy change trumpeted the fact "997 out of every 1000 employees who have taken the JKT have passed on their first or second attempt" but carefully avoided breaking the figures down further leaving the number of people who fail in their first attempts, and therefore the number of people who have been shafted out of propay, wide open to speculation! If even managers are so candid in expressing cynicism of the company's information, is it any wonder that the level of cynicism among hourly employees is utterly astronomical.....?
NOTE TO FRED: Before you send out a mass memo to your front line managers warning them against making such candid statements to employees and demanding they swear a blood-oath of blind obedience to you, let me just say that it's those managers who don't snap to attention and click their heels in deference to the corporate flag who are some of your best and most successful managers! Demand zombie-like behavior from managers and that's precisely what you'll get... a management cadre of mindless zombies!
Back to the subject of the "997 out of every 1000" figure the company tossed out in its memo, we are again confronted with a statistic none of us has any reason to believe. As I've said before, unless the numbers are produced by an outside independent auditing organization, they are virtually meaningless. Since the "997 out of every 1000" statement itself is a careful obfuscation of the actual ramifications of the old JKT policy, does it not logically follow that the figures themselves are likely an obfuscation of the real numbers? I've demonstrated repeatedly on this site that FedEx management is fully capable of printing outright lies in its memos and newsletters. I don't know about you, but once I catch someone in a deliberate lie, especially one that is personally beneficial to him or her, I can never think of that person as being trustworthy again. It won't, therefore, surprise many of you if I say that I think that 99.7% more likely represents the percentage of hot air contained in the information churned out by FedEx's propaganda meisters...
For those of you who still doubt the sound foundation of my cynicism, I invite you to scrutinize the JKT memo of 7/11/97. Note that one of the changes being implemented in the policy is that the paid study time has now been doubled! Note that the financial consequences have been drastically revised so that you can still get a score of 4 on your review even if you flunk the first time! Note that the disciplinary ramifications of flunking the test have been completely eliminated! Now ask yourself if these monumental changes would be warranted if the success rate of the test was really 99.7%? To put it more clearly, would these drastic changes be necessary if they were only going to affect .3% of the employees at FedEx?????
Put in that perspective, it becomes clear that these incredible policy changes were brought about by something far more significant than .3% of our ranks! Even if you accept the company's figures, it is still clear that the percentage of employees who must be flunking the test on the first attempt is far greater than .3%. So great, in fact, that the company dared not quote the actual percentage alone and instead opted to offer an amorphous combination figure of first and second test attempts! By quoting us a success rate of 99.7% for a program and then using that as justification for making changes of tremendous proportions to the program, FedEx is essentially fixing something while touting the fact that it wasn't broken in the first place! Smell a rat yet....?
We will likely never know the real truth behind this tremendous upheaval in corporate policy. If a lawsuit lies at the core of the impetus for the changes, FedEx's legal eagles were probably smart enough to make whatever settlement that was involved contingent upon the silence of the party or parties involved. Corporate America routinely employs such legal trap doors in order to hush up embarrassing lawsuit judgements and stem a possible future tide of similar lawsuits. If a jury was involved, FedEx could have greased the legal machine and received a sealed verdict as another means to keep the entire matter quiet. And if you think that even FedEx's clout isn't that powerful, let me remind you that we are working for a company powerful enough to keep the Congress of the United States in extended session just to get two words crammed back into the FAA Reauthorization Act last year....
If the economic realities of the time are the reason for the policy change, we already know FedEx isn't about to admit that either. We already have their lame justification for the changes in our hands in black in white in the form of the [we fixed something that wasn't broken] memo of 7/11/97. By the way. Need I again point out just how insulting to our collective intelligence that memo was?
After having read this far into this article, I would hope that most of you are becoming very impatient with me. For if most of you are not feeling a bit tense by now, we are all in serious trouble boys and girls! Thus far, something has been conspicuously missing from this discussion of the JKT policy reversal. That "something" is the role the unions played in it! The reason I waited until this point in the article to mention the unions is that the thing I have personally found most troubling about the JKT policy reversal is the almost total absence of any mention of the union's role in the theories I've heard my coworkers discuss! We would do well to pause and contemplate the two inescapable truths we all do know before getting lost in theories we'll probably never see validated by hard evidence. The first truth is that this year has seen positive changes in corporate policy which have been so great in their magnitude as to set this year apart from any we have ever experienced! The second truth is that the company has never seen such a formidable pro-union presence within its ranks and felt the kind of organizing pressure from the unions as it has experienced this past year! So before we all embrace one theory or another, maybe we'd better get our heads out of the clouds and stick with the facts we do know.
One other thing you might want to consider as you think about these theories is that both theories, though reflecting negatively upon the company, ironically serve the company's best interests where the issue of union organizing is concerned. Since both theories give no credit to the role of the unions, while they don't cast a favorable light on FedEx, they also relegate the unions to the realm of the distant background. So, the next time you find yourself listening to one of your coworkers talking about lawsuits or economic trends, you just might want to bring him or her back down to earth by injecting those two inescapable and not at all coincidental truths into the discussion....
The last thought I'd like to leave you with concerns a notable disclaimer found in the second paragraph of the 7/11/97 memo that stated that "none of these changes will be retroactive." Gee, what a surprise! Fred would definitely have to sell off a couple of those corporate executive jets he uses to ferry around Congressmen if he had to reimburse everyone who's been screwed out of propay over the JKT! And just imagine if Fred were forced to have to pay lost wages to everyone who has ever lost their jobs at FedEx over flunking the JKT because they had a couple of other letters in their file at the time! He and the rest of the board of directors might have to jumpseat for the next few years! Oh the horror!
Hey Fred! If someone happens to slip a copy of this article under your office door, here's a little something for you to contemplate as you slide in between those silk sheets tonight and rest your weary brow upon your overstuffed down pillows. Charlie Manson is alive today because California made it's revocation of the death penalty retroactive. Doesn't it seem at all troubling to you that a FedEx employee can't get the same kind of break as a mass murderer? Sleep tight......