FedEx Ground wants everyone to think that the driver compensation dispute is nothing but one disgruntled contractor trying to shake down the parent company for more money, by illegally setting up a “union.” Ignoring the big brown elephant standing on the negotiating table and trying not to be noticed won’t keep America’s package delivery drivers on the road. Evil inflationary polices of Joe Biden and his puppet regime have created a total nightmare for the American consumer, just in time for Black Friday.
FedEx won’t face facts
FedEx Ground executives are continuing to hold a hard line against their disgruntled contract drivers. They severed all ties with Spencer Patton and filed a lawsuit against him. Some say its totally calculated to silence his views on the issue.
Like a bad wallpaper job, pushing down the bubble in one place only causes it to pop back up somewhere else. Whether the corporate honchos want to admit it or not, what we’re looking at right now is the “Nightmare Before Christmas.” What’s in store for holiday shoppers isn’t some Tim Burton movie fantasy.
At the core of the whole FedEx contract issue is rampant inflation, the likes of which have not been seen since peanut farmer Jimmy Carter held the reins. Green energy policies have crippled domestic transportation through both scarcity of diesel grade fuel and prices rising through the roof.
Companies struggling to keep their head above water are suddenly caught in climate-change-fear induced rising sea levels and they’re drowning in debt. The rank and file drivers are concerned that “if surcharges are not shared or allowed to trickle down, that you will see the effects of national shut downs in all industries this year.” Not just shipping.
FedEx isn’t responsible for the inflation, liberal polices are. Whether responsible or not, if they don’t quickly re-negotiate their contracts with the smaller distributors, FreightWaves points out that “more than one-third of the 6,000 contractors are in such deep financial troubles that they could go out of business before the end of the year.”
The company knows what’s to come. “This, in turn, could wreak havoc on FedEx Ground’s peak season delivery schedules.” They think the other two thirds of their drivers can soak up the load but insiders say that’s dreaming.
The big brown elephant
Meanwhile, as the bitter dispute wages in print between FedEx, Spencer Patton, and the independent operators he represents, there is a huge brown elephant, with UPS stenciled on its side, standing on the negotiating table and trying hard not to be noticed. Not only is UPS the number one contender to take up the slack that their rival can’t handle, they already solved their inflation problem. They solved it by paying their drivers more to make up for rising costs.
The thing that makes them unspeakable is that they are already unionized. Josh Taylor at Shipware LLC reports that UPS, “facing potentially contentious contract talks with the Teamsters union, wants no part of a battle that pits a rival carrier against its drivers.” UPS’ leadership, he adds, “believes that getting enmeshed in such a fight is something that should be avoided.”
Spencer Patton swears up and down that he isn’t trying to unionize FedEx. All he wanted to do was bring several voices together for a conference to kick it all around. His only goal was to convince the suits to cough up more money and he was totally up front about it.
The point the honchos refuse to accept is that if the money doesn’t come through, a third of the independent drivers will close their business. The remaining contractors don’t have the ability to pick up the slack.
The COVID-19 lock down had a huge effect on the shipping industry, for everyone including FedEx. It “caused a tremendous amount of shift” to “items delivered to your home or your office on a daily basis.” Day in and day out, seven days a week. That caused a “great deal of stress for all companies that are in the shipping and delivery business.”
Nobody had “access to employees” because everyone was either in quarantine or afraid to go out in public. As fuel and maintenance costs steadily skyrocket, the increase has to be passed down the supply chain. Drivers need more money from the shippers, union or not. Shippers will obviously pass those costs along to consumers. Be sure to remember that Democrats are responsible for all this inflation when you vote in the upcoming election.
