Once upon a time in America, railroads were the principal means of transporting goods and people across the nation. Once railroad workers unionized, it soon became apparent that they wielded the power to cripple the nation's economy if they were to decide to strike because the mode of transportation they controlled was, for all intents and purposes, the only game in town. Even small union locals, if they were located at key geographical points where several rail lines converged, could devastate the economy of large regions of the country if they decided to strike independently over local labor disputes. This situation could not be tolerated by a young America which had just come into its own as a world superpower. Nobody could be allowed to hold the entire nation hostage to its whims.
To remedy this dangerous situation, the Railway Labor Act was introduced and passed into law by Congress. Basically, it called for labor disputes concerning railroads which could not be settled between the rail companies and rail workers' unions to be presented to a National Mediation Board which would act as an independent arbiter. It also called for the rail unions to consolidate into a single national union which would prevent those strategically located smaller local rail unions from causing a disproportionate disruption of commerce as well. This effectively precluded the potential threat of crippling strikes.
With the emergence of airlines as the preeminent means of long distance transportation for people, Congress extended the umbrella of the Railway Labor Act to airlines as well. Note that I specifically used the word "people" in the previous sentence. That's because airlines have never been, nor will they ever be (as long as we are using fossil fuels) the primary means of transporting *goods* across the country. The railroads and trucking industries remain the primary modes of transporting goods across the nation.
The logical question one might be asking oneself at this point is why, since FedEx isn't a people mover like the other airlines and isn't the primary, secondary or even the third largest carrier of goods in the country, does it merit coverage under the Railway Labor Act? The answer, pure and simple, is that it doesn't! If FedEx closed its doors tomorrow, the country would manage to get along without it just fine. There are far too many alternatives in the shipping industry today to imagine that FedEx is an indispensable part of the nation's economic well being. Any courier who's been on the job for any reasonable length of time knows that the vast majority of packages we handle are *not* time sensitive shipments in the sense that economic disaster would befall the shippers or recipients were the packages delayed a few days.
Late freight is almost the norm at the station I work at (GYY). Even in the midst of summer, on days where hardly a cloud can be found anywhere on the national weather map, we'll have late freight! "Go with the plan" is the most oft-repeated phrase in GYY management's vocabulary. When we hear those words, we know that designated routes will return to the station immediately after the P-1 cycle and will then return to the route areas to distribute the late freight. Despite this commonplace situation, I cannot even begin to recall the last time I was confronted by an irate or even anxious recipient as I delivered their P-1 packages to them at 1 p.m. or later nor can I recall when I last received a message from dispatch about an urgent need to deliver late freight to any particular recipient.
If it were possible, I'd love to be able to wager a huge sum of money on the ability to prove that the overwhelming majority of people who use FedEx do so *not* because of our time-specific guarantees to deliver the goods, but because of our sterling reputation in the industry of getting products from one place to another without losing or damaging them. Having worked for the competition, I can assure you that I wouldn't consider sending anything I really cared about any other way except FedEx! One very noticeable difference between being a courier at FedEx as opposed to holding the same job at our competition is that I'm spared the embarrassment of having to deliver package after package that's leaking, rattling or otherwise mangled. I could probably count the number of packages I've handled that I knew were damaged in my entire 10 years at FedEx on one hand! If you ask me, *that's* the real secret of our success....
The point that I'm trying to hammer home here is that truly time-sensitive shipments which are crucial to the operations of American businesses actually comprise a much smaller amount of our total package volume than FedEx would ever want to admit to Congress. Furthermore, were FedEx unionized, and were we to go out on strike, there's little doubt that UPS, Airborne and other air freight companies could pick up the slack with little, if any detrimental effect on the national economy.
On the other hand, allow me to relate something from my UPS experience with you that offers a different view of the Railway Labor Act issue. When I was a personnel clerk at UPS, I reported directly to a man who was possibly one of the most respected men at UPS at the time. He was a master at labor relations, renowned for his fairness and a wizened veteran of UPS's brawling adolescence. Virtually everyone in management, regardless of their position, deferred to this man! Some time back during the 70s there was talk of a possible national strike at UPS. This was not like one of the localized "wildcat" strikes that the company had been hit with a few times before. It was a national threat! I asked the wise old man who had taken me under his wing and mentored me what he thought about the threats of impending doom. He looked at me with a knowing smile and simply said: "Kev, it'll never happen." with such serene certainty in his voice and demeanor that I immediately accepted it as absolute gospel. When I asked him why it would never happen he simply said that the government would never allow it because UPS was so immense a company and so many businesses depended upon it that a national strike would not be permitted by the government.
Truth be told, UPS could swallow FedEx whole and hardly pass a belch in the process. The enormous tonnage of goods moved through the UPS system, even back in the 70s when I worked for them almost boggled the imagination. Their main Chicago location was a vast building that houses what can only be described as a train that moved on tracks in a perpetual oval through the entire length of a building that was better than two city blocks long and a block wide! This train called the "carousel" consisted of cars that had tiers of bins with conveyor belt floors which were filled with packages at one end of the building and then would discharge themselves onto slides at another end of the building. It's not hard, therefore, to understand that upon my first visit to FedEx's Memphis facility, I was not nearly as awestruck at the operation as the uninitiated first visitor probably is.
Okay, so what's my point you ask? Simply that Congress was sold a bill of goods where FedEx was concerned. In reality, if anyone in the shipping industry belongs under such jurisdiction, given the historical reason for the Railway Labor Act, it is the UPS shipping juggernaut, *not* FedEx!
The reason things are so ass-backwards where governmental jurisdiction in the shipping industry is concerned is that once the government does something, it's damn near impossible to undo the knot of red tape they tie. The body politic is loathe to admit error on its part. That's simply the nature of the beast. Even if you do succeed in getting the attention and support of one or two politicians, getting the entire Congress to go along with what would amount to an admission of grievous error is a monumental struggle that almost always requires the massive support of the public at large. The task becomes even more ponderous in nature if you are also fighting against a well-oiled lobbying machine with deep pockets and an iron will to oppose your cause. This is why FedEx is so firmly locked in the grasp of the Railway Labor Act. In the company's fledgling stage of development, Fred lobbied Congress furiously to get us placed under its jurisdiction and the rest, as they say, is history!
It's not fair, but it is the hand that's been dealt us. The question is if there are enough of us with the resolve and patience to work around this obstacle. We won't be able to do anything legislatively unless and until we can provide proof of a substantial number of supporters among our ranks. I have applied for permission to reprint a New York Times article that explains in great detail the lobbying muscle of FedEx and the degree of expertise that influence is wielded with. I will put it on the web site if and when I get such permission.