Matters Of FICTION!

In response to several Chicago area stations filing election petitions with the NLRB, management is distributing a so-called "fact" sheet it enitiled "Matters Of FACT" at work group meetings here. This is the response I composed for this latest example of anti-union propaganda.


As you are probably aware of, FedEx is distributing a so-called “fact” sheet laughingly entitled “Matters of FACT” wherein a number of allegations have been made about the organizing activities of IBT Local 710 in the Chicago area. At best, this “fact” sheet merely echoes things everyone who has attended a union meeting already knows, but it does so in a manner deliberately designed to portray the Teamsters as misleading FedEx employees. At worst, “Matters of FACT” tells some outright lies!

The “fact” sheet starts out with a lie by stating that “The Teamsters have led you to believe that an election will take place.” Yet, at every meeting they’ve held, the Teamsters have made it abundantly clear that the struggle to organize FedEx will take years and that even though they are filing petitions for stations where the employees have demonstrated support for unionization by large percentages, getting FedEx moved from RLA to NLRB jurisdiction (the purpose of the petitions) is a long shot at best. What the “fact” sheet doesn’t tell you is that as more and more stations sign on throughout the country, the strength of the union’s argument that FedEx should be governed by the NLRB rather than the RLA is increased! The NMB is sitting on the Liberty District’s case because thus far, it is the only district where FedEx employees have actively risen in support of the union cause in numbers great enough to make filing a district-sized petition possible. As more and more stations and/or districts get on the bandwagon, the pressure on the NMB to finally issue a ruling will mount. At some point, it will be impossible to ignore the deafening roar of the crowd!

The second outright lie “Matters of FACT” tells is that “The IBT claims that when you sign an authorization card you are merely indicating an interest in union representation.” First off, this is typical of just how insulting FedEx management can often be where the intelligence of its own employees is concerned! FedEx actually wants you to believe that you might be stupid enough not to know what the very word “authorization” means!! Anyone who got past sixth grade knows that whenever you authorize someone to do something, you are investing them with the ability to take some sort of action on your behalf. What does FedEx management imagine we thought we were authorizing the union to do when we signed their cards, cater a party for us?

Secondly, again by virtue of what hundreds of us have been repeatedly told by the union, though we may have signed an authorization card, we all realize that until an actual union vote is held, those authorization cards are good for nothing more than providing the unions with a barometer of the actual hard support they have among FedEx workers. So despite management’s pronouncements about the ominous implications of signing an authorization card for the union, one shining ray of truth rips through the haze of fear they are trying to create. If a union does come to represent FedEx workers, it will only happen when every employee the union seeks to represent has cast a private and secret ballot to decide the matter and the union succeeds in winning a majority of those ballots! In fact, even if you have signed an authorization card, there’s absolutely nothing to prevent you from voting against the union once a union vote is called for!

The third outright lie contained in “Matters of FACT” was stated as follows. “The IBT has been saying that the filing of an election petition means that 100% of the employees at that location have signed authorization cards.” To any one of the over 300 people who jammed the Hillside meeting last year and to the hundreds who have attended the smaller meetings at the union hall, the outrageous nature of this lie has to be infuriating! The Teamsters have gone out of their way to carefully state their strategies and objectives. They’ve told us all that they’ll file petitions for a station if they get 30% or more of the eligible employees at that station to sign authorization cards, but they also add that they prefer the percentage to be closer to 50% if at all possible. In at least one case, better than 75% of the eligible employees at one of those Illinois stations that an election petition was filed for had signed cards! And by the way, it might be real interesting for you to know that in the Liberty District case, better than 60% of the employees in that district signed authorization cards! Funny, isn’t it, how FedEx stopped short of telling that part of the story.....?

Of course, no piece of anti-union propaganda produced by FedEx would be complete without at least one reference that paints the unions as thugs and assorted unsavory characters with broken noses and blackjacks hanging out of their back pockets, and “Matters of FACT” didn’t disappoint us in this regard either. This time, a vague reference made about some “highly suspect retaliation against one of their own members” was how the union bogeyman was brought to the fore. Yet, even in whining about those nasty old union thugs, the author or authors of “Matters of FACT” managed to make a very important point when they stated that “their Secretary Treasurer and two other officers were recently suspended.” The operative word here is “suspended.” That means that even if one does find malfeasance within the union, there are methods of correcting the wrong. On the other hand, if you get shafted by FedEx, where do you go to correct the wrong......? Gotcha!

Speaking of “highly suspect retaliation,” does anyone remember Rory Trotter? He was the founding father of the organizing effort at GYY which sparked all of the subsequent union activity in the region. Of course, he’s no longer employed by FedEx.....

The “Matter of FACT” propaganda sheet ends by inviting us to ask the IBT about the “truthfulness of these FACTS.” It then boldly states that the unions won't be able to contradict them. Yet I, a mere lone employee, obviously too stupid to understand what the word “authorization” means, has just done, in my humble opinion, precisely what the author of “Matters of FACT” claimed was impossible. Imagine that!

By the way, I’m not just some anonymous malcontent that snipes from the bushes. I’m Kevin J. Osiowy, a courier at GYY, and if you liked this little piece of honesty, you need to grab your surfboard and surf the Internet toward the Fed Up Home Page at:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kevin_osiowy
One other thing. Don’t just take my word for any of this. Ask your coworkers who cared enough to attend any of the union meetings about the charges made in “Matters of FACT.” But don’t be surprised if they tell you the same thing I’ve told you.....

Remember! It’s about DIGNITY!