12-18-08, 10:47 am
Management has been harassing pro-union employees, Los Angeles area FedEx workers told a blue ribbon commission panel this week. The workers testified about their desire to join the Teamsters Union in order to boost their standard of living and protect health and other benefits.
'Pro-union employees are followed into restrooms by managers who look over stalls,' said Rudy Hernandez, a 20-year FedEx Freight driver. 'Dispatchers tell drivers if they vote the union in, FedEx will close down this terminal.'
Dan Forrand, a aviation mechanic at FedEx Express, said he had planned to retire when he turned 62. When FedEx changed its defined benefit pension plan, eliminating thousands in retirement benefits for many workers, however, Forrand found he would have to work longer to recoup financial losses.
'I've calculated that I'll lose about $230,000 that I would have accrued under the defined benefit plan,' Forrand said. 'I am worried that I am slipping out of the middle class.'
The panel was established by area labor unions, including the Teamsters and the LA County federation of the AFL-CIO, and faith community leaders, according to a press statement released by the Teamsters.
Economic experts, clergy members and workers discussed ways to help the workers to protect wages and benefits and remedy the anti-union intimidation tactics of the company.
'Without a union, FedEx mechanics have no job security,' said Jon Zerolnick, an analyst for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. 'Currently their jobs can be outsourced and hours cut – and lives are seriously impacted – at the whim of management. They need a union to protect jobs.'
Pastor Bridie C. Roberts of the Los Angeles Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice said, 'These workers need the help of everyone to keep themselves and their families in the middle class.'
Workers also testified that employers have created an anti-union backlash, holding anti-union mandatory meetings, distributing anti-union literature, showing anti-union videos at work and engaging in many acts of intimidation.
Most of the actions taken by FedEx managers and supervisors, as testified to by FedEx employees, violate state and federal labor laws. Enforcement of these laws, especially under the Bush administration, is minimal at best. Even when workers do win federal cases against anti-union employers, appeals and federal red tape delay punishments so long that employers have little incentive to obey federal labor laws.
Union activists say these conditions are why Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a law that would make it easier for workers to join labor unions by eliminating red tape and imposing harsher penalties on employers who violate labor laws.
If Los Angeles FedEx workers did join the Teamsters, they would be among the first unionized FedEx employees. The Teamsters union already represents about 250,000 workers at FedEx competitor United Parcel Service.
