The Philadelphia Inquirer Article Pt.2

The Philadelphia Inquirer Article Pt.2

Ferrier says it's all about repaying the generosity that the UAW and his coworkers showed him when he was sick. "Days that I'm tired, when I don't want to talk to another guy about his manager yelling at him in Wisconsin, I get on the phone and do it anyway, just because of what they did for me. I'm in this for the long haul."

Ferrier thinks Puglisi, the fired cargo handler, has a decent chance of getting his job back. After the run-in with his boss, Puglisi called People Help, Federal's employee-counseling program, and was referred to a mental health center for treatment. Ferrier says this is in Puglisi's favor: He recognized his problem and tried to deal with it. But now Puglisi lets slip that his supervisors had been urging him to seek help for some time, even before the blowup.

"Did they ever put it in writing?" Ferrier asks.

They did, Puglisi said.

Ferrier thinks for a moment, then rattles off a counter-argument, just in case the Appeals Board raises the issue. Puglisi was too embarrassed to confront his illness. He repressed, rationalized. It took a crisis to break through his denial.

Ferrier, a recovering alcoholic, prods Puglisi to take his depression seriously and not just use it as a means to get his job back. "There's singles groups around, there's mental health groups. There's a lot of things you can do, and you need to start doing it. You're a young, handsome man."

Puglisi smiles sheepishly and says, "Thanks," running his hand over his bald spot.

Deb Ferrier arrives bearing takeout pasta and serves Puglisi a plateful.

"I think you got a good chance of beating it, I really do," says Al. "You got to take care of yourself once you're back in. That's the important thing, John."

Puglisi gets up to leave. Ferrier promises to say a prayer for him and offers a final piece of advice.

"Kiss a little butt, please."

FOR MOST OF THE FIRST year, the organizing effort stayed underground. The employees preached, passed out handbills, gathered signatures, but they were discreet about it. They didn't want to attract the company's attention until they'd established a solid base of support. Carney, a Pete Incaviglia lookalike with a barrel chest and weightlifter's arms, was in a perfect position to spread the union message. Working as a "yard jockey" at the airport, maneuvering tractor-trailers around the FedEx sorting center, he was in daily contact with drivers from around the region. "If we wanted to get any kind of union information passed, we could have it through the whole district almost as fast as the company could," he says. "And we did."

Organizing drives need information to survive, and the union activists gathered it relentlessly. On the pretext of planning parties, they got management to supply names, addresses and phone numbers for employees all over the Liberty District. Sympathizers leaked internal documents, some of them fresh off the photocopier. (When the union tried to put one such memo in evidence at a National Labor Relations Board hearing, a FedEx lawyer sputtered: "That's a privileged document! I don't know where they got that, but. . . .") Within a few months of that small, nervous gathering in Carney's living room, meetings of the organizing committee drew so many people that they had to be moved to a UAW hall in Eddystone.

On Aug. 26, 1991, the campaign went public. Two dozen FedEx employees marched into the NLRB offices at Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Center City and filed a petition. It asked the board to conduct an election among 1,200 couriers, tractor-trailer drivers and customer-service agents in the Liberty District to determine whether they wanted to be represented by the UAW. Petitions must be accompanied by a "showing of interest" from at least 30 percent of the employees. The union said it had signatures from well over half.

The employees launched a newsletter, FedExpressions, published and distributed nationwide at UAW expense. Billy Costello volunteered as editor. Ferrier inaugurated a column on GFT. Phone calls and letters poured in to the UAW from FedEx stations around the country - including one in Alaska. The comments resonated with the mood in Philadelphia. "Unfair treatment, pushed beyond safety and no job security," wrote a courier in Lehigh County. "Not exactly sure about a union, but need some sort of voice," said someone in Connecticut. "Feel like a puppet and management is pulling all the strings." And from Pittsburgh: "We are awaiting the UAW's presence."

As the economy improved in 1993, Federal's profits perked up, and the conditions that had sparked the organizing campaign eased a bit. Raises began flowing again. The company's retirement contributions went back to their earlier level. Management softened its policy on terminations slightly. But for people committed to the union, the kindler, gentler mood only drove home the reality that management had all the power - that it could give and take, grant and rescind, whenever and whatever it chose.

Something fundamental had changed in people's attitudes, in how they viewed their bosses, their work, each other. It was evident during hearings on the NLRB petition. On the neutral terrain of a government office, the workers didn't have to take orders from anyone. Barbara Rahke, an international representative for the UAW, brought it into focus by rebuking Federal's lead lawyer, M. Rush O'Keefe Jr. The UAW had subpoenaed a group of workers to testify. O'Keefe thought the union was calling more witnesses than it needed simply to get people a paid day off. During a break, he walked over to a knot of employees and began calling out names, making sure that people who'd been excused from work to testify had actually showed up.

Rahke marched over and told O'Keefe he was out of line, way out of line.

"They are our witnesses," she said hotly. "They do not report to you. If you have anything to say, say it to me."

The roll call ended.

WHEN THEY STARTED WAY back in '91, the employees could hardly have foreseen that they would still be waiting for an election four years later, that their movement would become a docket number, a pile of documents on a legal treadmill. But that is what happened. When the UAW filed its petition with the NLRB, Federal Express promptly demanded that it be dismissed. The company said it was not subject to the labor board's jurisdiction. Thus was born NLRB Case No. 4-RC-17698.

It's a dispute over which of two laws applies to FedEx - the Railway Labor Act (which also covers airlines) or the National Labor Relations Act, which governs the rest of American industry. It is much harder for unions to organize under the railway act. Elections are held among all a company's employees in a given job category. In the case of Federal Express, that would mean campaigning among 56,000 ground workers across the country, simultaneously. It is also much harder to strike under the railway act. Under the National Labor Relations Act (administered by the NLRB), unions can organize one plant at a time - or one region at a time, as the UAW is trying to do. And they have broad latitude to strike.

In previous cases, the NLRB and the courts ruled that Federal Express, as a chartered air carrier, fell under the Railway Act. The UAW is not trying to change the status of pilots, flight dispatchers, and other employees in Federal's air operations. But it contends that couriers, tractor-trailer drivers, and other ground workers should be permitted to organize under the NLRB - as their counterparts at UPS, Airborne Express, and other delivery companies did years ago. Federal Express says this is a terrible idea. The company maintains that its ground and air operations are seamlessly integrated and that it would make no sense to put them under separate laws, each with its own elaborate rules on organizing, bargaining, striking.

The two sides fought it out for weeks before an NLRB hearing officer in Philadelphia in the spring of 1992. The proceeding generated piles of legal briefs, hundreds of exhibits, and a transcript nearly 2,000 pages long. Peter Hirsch, regional director of the NLRB, reviewed the record and decided . . . not to decide. Instead, he referred the case to the five NLRB members in Washington. They asked the National Mediation Board, which oversees the Railway Act, for an "advisory opinion." Then the UAW was granted a second hearing to present new evidence. More testimony, more exhibits, more briefs. By then, it was March 1993, and the case was nowhere near a resolution, the union nowhere near an election.

Last year, desperate to force matters to a head, the union asked the NLRB to hold oral arguments on the case. The request was granted, and on Dec. 7, several dozen lawyers - from FedEx, the UAW, United Parcel, the Teamsters, the airline industry, and the railroads - crowded into a carpeted 11th-floor hearing room in Washington. Joe Carney was there, sitting in the rear with a handful of UAW organizers. Two FedEx workers from Washington joined them in a show of solidarity. Four rows away sat a management contingent from Memphis.

Rush O'Keefe, the FedEx lawyer, and Bill Josem, his UAW counterpart, eyed each other warily, like old combatants climbing into the ring once again. Josem told the board that Federal Express "isn't unique anymore," that it has become indistinguishable from other delivery companies governed by the NLRB. A FedEx manager clenched her face in disapproval. "He's obviously referring to a different record than I am," O'Keefe said when his turn came.

When the lawyers had all had their say, more than three hours later, the board reserved decision. As the room emptied, one of the Washington couriers approached the dais and shook hands with NLRB chairman William Gould, a former Stanford law professor. The man had a courtly manner and a lilting African accent. "I would like to implore you," he said, "to make a decision."

JOHN PUGLISI DID NOT get his job back. On Jan. 25, the Appeals Board in Memphis upheld his firing, "after careful consideration of all the facts." Puglisi has enrolled in a state-funded training program for tractor-trailer drivers and hopes to find work in that field.

Dan Weaks, the courier who shoved his boss, also lost his GFT appeals. He has been denied state unemployment benefits as well, on the ground that he was fired for "willful misconduct." He is appealing the ruling with help from the UAW, and looking for work.

In September, Federal Express announced the latest in a series of pay raises. The company said a strong economy and solid earnings had made this generosity possible. But some employees thought there was something else at work. "People were coming up to me and saying, 'Thanks, Bill,' " says Costello. "They were saying that if it wasn't for what we were doing, we wouldn't have gotten that increase."

Early this year, Al Ferrier had surgery on his right knee. The night before, he was making plans to have a fired courier drop by his hospital room to collect some paperwork and get a pep talk. Ferrier was a little nervous about the operation, but he was looking forward to being laid up. "It'll give me more time to work on the union thing."

The NLRB has not ruled on Case No. 4-RC-17698, nor given any indication when it will

Copyright Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. 1995
DESCRIPTORS: EMPLOYEE; ABUSE; LABOR; US; PA;
PHILADELPHIA