March Updates! |
The Teamster’s meeting at Hillside on March 22nd, despite a lower turnout than last year, would have to be called a success nonetheless. Many people had told organizing committee members that since they had already signed cards, they felt their attendance was unnecessary. The fact that the meeting also happened to take place on the first weekend in a long time where temperatures were in the springtime range didn’t help matters. Be that as it may, good news as well as valuable information was passed on to those in attendance which needs to be shared with everyone involved in the cause.
Bill Messina, the Local 710 organizer who’s been working on the FedEx campaign in our area, announced that the union had thus far received approximately 1200 signed cards from Chicago area stations with more coming in all the time! He also informed us that at least one more local station is on the verge of filing a petition with almost 50% of the station’s employee’s signed on! That would bring the total number of Chicago area stations filed with the NLRB to seven! The momentum in this area seems completely irresistible!
Speaking of momentum, Bill also read off a list of areas where the union has made inroads in organizing FedEx employees. Petitions have been filed with the NLRB for stations in Indianapolis, Muncie and Kokomo, Indiana, Lexington, Kentucky and Rolla and St. Clair, Missouri! Organizing efforts are well underway for Birmingham, Alabama, St. Louis, Missouri, Evansville, Indiana, Salt Lake City, Utah, Cleveland, Dayton, Springfield and Cincinnati, Ohio, Albany and New York City, New York, Louisville, Kentucky, Lexena and Kansas City, Kansas, Phoenix, Arizona, Orlando, Florida, Detroit, Michigan, Burlington, Vermont and of course, Chicago and most of northern Illinois! These are just the areas Local 710 has become aware of! As you'll soon read, Bill didn't even know about the union's activities in California or Washington state!
We were also shown a videotape which was made by the Teamster’s that featured a former successful professional union-buster who had finally realized the error of his unethical ways. This fellow was now working with the Teamsters by training their organizers in what to expect from corporations in the way of union-busting strategies. The videotape was a real eye-opener to say the least. I couldn’t do it justice by trying to describe everything in it on this site, but I strongly suggest that everyone involved in the cause contact the Teamster’s office in their area and ask to be shown the videotape! I’m sure your local union office will be happy to set up a time and place where you and other interested FedExers in your area can meet to watch it.
Management at the Modesto California FedEx station recently experienced a shakeup that wasn’t due to shifting in the tectonic plates in the earth’s crust. Instead, the tremors they felt were a result of the shifting of FedEx policy away from its “People First” foundation! On March 7th, the Teamsters filed an election petition for the Modesto, CA station with 48% of the employees at the station signed on and cards still rolling in! At the epicenter of the Modesto quake were FedEx point woman Pilar Barton and Gaylord Phillips, a Trustee for Teamster Local 386. Pilar has been keeping me updated about activities in her area and spreading the word about this site while rallying her coworkers to the cause. Her tireless efforts, her courage and the strength of her convictions are clearly evidenced by the speed of the Modesto campaign! Pilar and her coworkers succeeded in getting nearly half of their station signed on in just 6 weeks!
Gaylord Phillips is no slouch either! A UPS package car driver for the past 21 years, Gaylord became involved with FedEx employees under the IBT’s “Every Member An Organizer” program. Gaylord has sacrificed many hours of his own time to assist in bringing unity and hope to FedEx employees in his area! In correspondence with me, Gaylord was quick to share the credit for this accomplishment by writing: “It must be said however that the real heroes of this effort are the people working at Fed-Ex. They formed the inside organizing committee and got the people to the meetings. They collected the cards. And they stood up to Fed-Ex management.” I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Pilar, Gaylord and all the FedEx employees involved in the struggle to restore dignity to the work place in Modesto!
Gaylord also informed me that the Teamsters are working with FedEx employees in Merecd, Sacramento, Concord, and San Jose. He also passed along word that Teamsters in the Seattle area are working on organizing 6 stations in that region! Pilar added Martinez, CA to the list of stations where organizing efforts are underway.
For those of you in that area of the country, I’d strongly encourage you to contact Gaylord via Local 386. This guy is a straight-shooter folks! From my correspondence with him, I’ve come to know his thoughts on the union and the politics of organizing and I assure you that his thinking is crystal clear and utterly ethical. He’s definitely a man you can trust and work with!
Spring is in the air! The birds are singing, the sun is shining and FedEx managers across the nation are applying copious amounts of Chap Stick on their lips in preparation for all the employee backsides they’re going to be showering with kisses up until the Survey Feedback Action is completed. Okay, I’ll admit that I’m just a crusty old cynic, but then again, I’ve seen 10 of these annual FedEx versions of the rites of spring so I’ve got a right to my cynicism!
Back when FedEx was a “People First” company, even I believed the SFA meant something. I had heard about managers and senior managers being toppled from their positions by SFA results in the “critical” range of numbers. However, as the years have passed, I’ve seen SFA results that were absolutely dismal that have simply been met with nothing more than lip service from corporate level management. Anyone who’s paid any attention to the “Frontline” videos over the years has likely noticed that the post-Frontline SFA reports have gone from specific reporting and focusing on the problems reflected in the SFA to glossing over the results with ambiguous phrases that go something like “We’ve heard your concerns and are making every effort to address them.” or countering wage issues by simply reciting a litany of existing benefits and incentives that are obviously unsatisfactory to most of us!
Until I started the web site, I never really gave a lot of thought to the SFA. It had become simply another bit of bureaucratic ritual we all have to repeat periodically. However, now that I’m looking at FedEx through an involved eye, I’ve stumbled upon a few ideas about the SFA that I had never before considered. The first of these revelations is the coincidental seasonal timing of the SFA. I don’t know about you, but it’s tough for me to be angry during spring. You’ve got to admit that spring is a season full of optimism and eager anticipation. The dreary gray of winter gives way to the lush green of awakening lawns and the colorful bursts of my wife’s flower garden. We start losing those cumbersome layers of clothing and we’re no longer concerned about patches of ice and hills of snow under foot. In short, we are collectively uplifted psychologically by the season. So is it mere coincidence that FedEx chooses this particular time of the year to poll our opinions....?
Back in November, when Fred announced what has come to be widely called the anti-union raise we top-of-scale employees are getting in April, I wrote an article imploring my fellow FedExers not to be April-fooled by it. However, as someone recently pointed out to me in an e-mail message, there may also be a connection between the SFA and the timing of the April raise! What better way to raise SFA results than to offer a cash bribe!? If this is indeed part of what went into Fred’s decision to time the raise as he did, I doubt that it will have the desired effect. Because the raise is aimed exclusively at top-of-scale employees, they’ve been around long enough to be wise to the ways of management and likely share the cynical view of the raise most of us have....
Do you see Barney Fife in the mirror?I doubt that there are many people alive in America who haven’t watched the old “Andy Griffith Show” and aren’t familiar with Sheriff Taylor’s bumbling deputy, Barney Fife. Barney had a habit of almost shooting his foot off trying to get his gun out of his holster. His ineptitude has become legendary and beloved. Unfortunately, when a FedEx employee, figuratively speaking, shoots himself or herself in the foot, we become neither legendary nor beloved. All we wind up doing is losing customers and revenue for the company! Am I stepping out of character here? Not at all! I’d like to think that everything I’ve placed on this site is solidly rooted in common sense and this is definitely a matter of common sense. Whenever we do something that ultimately results in a dissatisfied customer or otherwise denies FedEx of revenues, we are hurting ourselves, endangering our futures and weakening our own bargaining position as a result! Whenever I hear about customers who have received less- than-premium service, while I might attribute the lackadaisical performance of the employees involved to the widespread angst against the company, I vehemently condemn this methodology of “getting even!” What we all have to understand is that our dissatisfaction with FedEx cannot, in any way, be laid at the feet of our customers! They don’t dictate corporate policy! Furthermore, they are still paying a premium rate for our service and are entitled to get their money’s worth despite our problems with FedEx management! Our goal should be to make FedEx as lucrative a business as possible. If we drive customers away to the competition, do you honestly imagine that this will enhance our chances of attaining wage and benefit increases once we reach the bargaining table? If we allow our reputation to be tarnished now, think of how difficult it will be to regain that reputation down the road when we once again attain our dignity as workers and are filled with renewed enthusiasm for our jobs? Okay, so what got me up on this soap box? Just as the unjustified firing of a coworker I knew personally motivated me to start this web site, so also was the unjustified shabby treatment of a customer I know personally instrumental in motivating me to write this article. The customer’s name is Jeff Tamarkin, and I’ve known him from years of online correspondence. Jeff is the former editor of Goldmine magazine and is presently a writer for Discoveries magazine. He is also a voter on the Grammy Awards committee and has written liner notes for countless albums and articles that have appeared in newspapers across the nation. Add to that the fact that his wife is an author who has published several books and you have the kind of folks we really don’t want to alienate from our company. Yet, thanks to ineptitude, gross negligence and a seemingly total lack of pride in doing the job, several FedEx people have been instrumental in doing just that! This story is even more tragic because once Jeff learned that I worked for FedEx, he was quick to inform me in public messages in a Compuserve forum that he was always satisfied with FedEx and was a faithful customer! Conversely, Jeff has had enough class to keep his messages about the nightmare he’s recently experienced with FedEx private. However, since this site is primarily visited by FedEx employees, I feel that recounting the story here will do negligible harm to our reputation. The story begins with Jeff’s wife sending a book manuscript to her publisher. This was essentially a local across-town shipment. The first story the Tamarkin’s got from FedEx was that the address they had put on the airbill was for a non-existent address even though Jeff assures me that they had sent several packages via FedEx to the same address on previous occasions! The next story FedEx gave the Tamarkins was that the original airbill had become separated from the package and that somehow, the package was assigned a new airbill number and was subsequently delivered to a large computer company by mistake! This one mystifies even an old veteran like me! When the Tamarkins simply asked that the package be retrieved from the computer company and returned to them, employee after employee assured them that it would be done, but each time they called back, the package had yet to be retrieved! Even people identifying themselves as managers, who promised to call the Tamarkins back, failed to do so! If that were not bad enough, FedEx actually billed the Tamarkins for the shipment and charged them an address correction fee to boot! I even asked my manager to look into the problem, and it was his research that revealed that the package had been delivered to a large computer company. Unfortunately, since I am so far removed geographically from where the package was misdelivered, this was the extent of my ability to get the situation resolved. I can’t imagine this kind of thing happening at my station. I can’t count the number of times I’ve changed service on, rerouted, retrieved or intercepted packages for customers as a result of messages I’ve received at the start of the day in printouts or via messages on my DADS screen. Furthermore, I know managers at my station have personally gone out to visit customers and resolve problems. So what’s going on in Jersey where this fiasco took place? It seems like everyone from Customer Service to the couriers involved as well as management dropped the ball and simply didn’t care enough to pick it up and get back in the game! My own feeling is that the systemic discontent among FedEx employees at all levels is hurting our reputation and endangering our futures. Yet it is within the power of those of us in the organizing movement to use our influence to counter this kind of thinking and performance. I would therefore implore all of you not to allow your personal feelings about FedEx to seep into your interactions with our customers! When you are critical of management policies and procedures that are unfair, you are in essence biting the hand that has slapped you. When you misplace your anger at FedEx by letting it affect the way you handle our customers' needs, you bite the hand that feeds you! We’re better than that! |
A frequent visitor to the web site passed along a very interesting URL showcasing the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Deming’s reputation and work, I don’t think I’d be exaggerating at all if I were to say that Dr. Deming is to the business world what Dr. Jonas Salk is to the world of medicine. Dr. Deming is widely recognized as the man who restored the competitive edge to American industry and is regarded with god-like reverence by the Japanese because of the crucial role he played in making Japan the business superpower it has become.
Dr. Deming’s influence was strongly represented in the FedEx of yesteryear. Sadly, upon reviewing Dr. Deming’s philosophies today, it becomes all to clear that FedEx management has almost totally abandoned the sound business principles espoused by this extraordinary man. I encourage everyone to visit this web site which is but one of many devoted to the teachings of Dr. Deming. Of particular interest to FedEx employees is the page on this site which reprises Dr. Deming’s “14 Points For Management.” Even the most casual reading of these 14 points offers stark evidence of how far astray FedEx management has wandered from these widely recognized and utterly sound business commandments! What follows are just my brief comments on a few of these 14 points as they are currently being abandoned by our corporate leadership. I’m sure others who peruse the works of Dr.Deming will be able to discern even more ways that FedEx has wandered far afield from these sound management principles.
Point 1 - Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
I don’t know how it is at other stations, but at GYY, management’s “purpose” has been anything but constant! Our focus for quality improvement changes from month to month, and sometimes, even from week to week. Worse yet, each time the focus changes, previous quality goals seem to fall by the wayside quickly. Of course, when peak season approaches, all bets are off and just about anything goes so long as we shovel the freight out as fast as possible!
As for providing jobs, Dr. Deming certainly didn’t have part-time jobs in mind when he penned this point! He was talking about quality employment where workers would have the ability to provide a respectable livelihood for themselves and their families. FedEx creates plenty of jobs, but part-time positions where human beings are forced to work 6 or 7 years before attaining the full-time position the company has been dangling before them like a just-out-of- reach carrot is completely unnecessary and dehumanizing.
Point 3 - Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
FedEx used to “build quality into the product” by inspiring its employees to give the job their all out of sheer enthusiasm generated by the company’s fair treatment of its employees, the competitive compensation they gave us and the comprehensive benefits package they offered. Now, in lieu of all the aforementioned, all the company offers is lip service to those things! As a result, all they’re succeeding in doing is producing employees who seem all too willing to follow management’s example by rendering mere lip service to the quality of the service they render unto our customers....
Point 6 - Institute training on the job.
Remember the days when FedEx actually believed in this? Remember spending an entire day in the interactive video room reviewing those Job Knowledge Test areas you were weak in on state-of-the-art training equipment and then taking your test? Now you get one hour of study time and a box full of books and pamphlets that make studying more like a scavenger hunt!
Point 8 - Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
About now, you should either be laughing or weeping as you read this! From asking us to sign countless letters and memos to handing us daily computer printouts with yellow highlighter marks on numbers that are anything less than perfect to termination after termination of our coworkers for totally unrelated and often utterly ludicrous reasons, management by intimidation and generation of fear has become standard operating procedure at FedEx.
Point 10 - Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
Right now, hanging over the unload belt at GYY is a huge banner announcing the goal of the night shift to get something like 60% of our outbound freight to the ramp by a certain time. Every time we turn around, we either see goal-oriented posters and banners hung on walls or bulletin boards and workgroup meetings are invariably used to distribute goal-oriented flyers.
Point 11a - Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
Can you imagine a FedEx manager not obsessed by stops per hour? I can. So can most any employee who’s been with the company for 8 or more years. We remember the days when taking the time to get to know your customers and offering that little “something extra” in personalized service was what FedEx employees were renowned for doing. Now, we start to break out in sweat whenever we walk in on a receptionist who’s on the phone for fear that this stop will take a few seconds longer than we can afford!
Point 11b - Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
Even FedEx managers will get a chuckle from this statement! Front line managers at FedEx don’t know any other way to manage than “by objective!” MBO is why not just FedEx, but many other corporations in America have come to regard employees as tools and numbers rather than as the human beings we are! It is also, in my opinion, why using the Supertracker to track and intimidate employees was such a natural step in the evolution of thinking among management at FedEx. Even though it was designed and announced as a tool to enhance our service for our customers, when a company’s leadership focuses its attention on numbers and goals in the manner MBO engenders, it becomes easier to lose sight of the human equation. FedEx managers are so myopic now that they cannot see beyond their computer screens.
Point 12a - Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
I can remember a time when customers would ask me for an emergency supply of FedEx packaging or airbills which was beyond that which I carried on my step van and I would tell them; "No problem!" I would simply drive over to the closest BSC where I would pick up enough supplies to meet the customer’s request. I didn’t even have to think twice about performing that bit of personalized service. I didn’t worry about the task eating into my “on road codes” and my manager never even questioned the way I had spent that extra time the next day. Now, if I perform such a service, I have to write a detailed description of what I did on my timecard and may find myself still being questioned about it the next day! I also remember people coming up to my van with a handful of documents asking me if I could help them do whatever they needed to do to send their package overnight. I’d package up their documents and either walk them through filling out the airbill or fill it out for them. Now, I hand them an airbill and a pak or box and blurt out directions to the nearest BSC or drop box and hurry along while trying to figure out where to make up those lost seconds! Am I proud of offering this kind of service? What do you think?
My best friend out in California has bemoaned this problem during many phone conversations with me and has pointed out an irony I was unaware of. In conversations he's had with UPS employees and customers in his area, he has told me that UPS management is now encouraging their employees to form personalized relationships with their customers and take extra time with them if necessary. In other words, as our management shoves us toward providing depersonalized service by beating us over the head with numbers, our competition is capitalizing on lessons they learned from the FedEx of yesteryear where the customer ruled supreme....
Point 12b - Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual merit rating and of management by objective.
Forcing quotas and goals on front line managers has eroded the quality of management every bit as much as it has eroded our quality of service to our customers. I don’t know if this is a corporate dictate or simply a local one, but managers at GYY now have to spend so many hours each week doing check rides. This means that managers are often inaccessible when we run into some sort of on-road emergency. It also means that managers are not available when you come in off the road. Since our fine sort times have been engineered and micro-managed down to the point where we have no flex time in which to discuss problems with our managers and they are either in meetings or on check rides when we come in from our routes, the contact between manager and employee has been reduced to fleeting moments aside from check rides! Again, this is indicative of a company that contemptuously regards human needs for the sake of attaining numerical goals. It is not important that we develop quality working relationships with our managers anymore. It is only important that we and our managers meet the engineer’s specifications....
On March 3rd, FedEx managers across the country received a 7 page publication from Fred entitled “From The Chief Executive Officer” (My, aren’t we title-conscious!) which essentially trumpeted how wonderful things are for FedEx employees and how bad they might be if unions have their way with the company. I am now working on a response to Fred’s preachments to his management choir and will publish it here in the next few days. If anyone has seen this publication, feel free to e-mail me your assessment of its content (or lack thereof). The publication is no secret. In fact, my best friend informs me that his senior manager was so enamored with it that he made sure all the employees in his station got a copy. I am equally certain that my friend will see to it that his coworkers get a copy of my response as well. After all Fred, it’s only fair, and you do guarantee us fair treatment,.... don’t you? If you haven’t seen the publication, try asking your manager for a copy. You’ll appreciate my response all the more after having read the original, but I don’t think Fred would give me reprint rights on the original....