Democrats Try To Force Unions on FedEx; Childers Votes Against Constituents Best Interest
Although the bill did not receive much media attention when it was voted on, House Democrats recently added language into the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009 which would reclassify FedEx workers to the National Labor Relations Act from the National Railway Labor Act. This essentially means that unions would be able to organize one location at a time under the NLRA, as opposed to the Railway jurisdiction where all workers vote on the union at the same time.
The two biggest supporters of this are UPS and the Teamsters. The Teamsters, of course, represent a large majority of UPS workers and stand to gain the most if it was easier to organize FedEx workers (i.e., new dues). UPS competes with FedEx, and often times can not compete with their labor costs, and also faces strike threats when labor contracts breakdown that FedEx does not have.
Further, Teamsters joined other unions in giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the campaigns of Barack Obama and other Democrats with the hope of making it easier to unionize workers. There is no other way to describe this but as payback.
But FedEx is not giving up. They have recently launched a campaign to oppose this legislation, where it now goes to the Senate and would need 60 votes to pass. FedEx is arguing that this is nothing more than a bailout for UPS, and said that the legislation would make the company less flexible. Find out more information at BrownBailout.com.
FedEx had previously said they would delay the purchase of 30 new Boeing 777 cargo planes if Congress moved forward with the legislation.
All three of Mississippi’s House Democrats voted in support of this legislation (roll call). This includes Rep. Travis Childers, who represents many in Desoto and other northwestern Mississippi counties who work at FedEx and may be negatively impacted by this legislation. By comparison, Rep. Steve Cohen, a very liberal member of the House who represents Memphis, was one of just four Democrats to vote against this bill. It is too bad Childers is looking out for labor unions instead of his own constituents.
Here is the first video of this media/ PR campaign from FedEx:
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