As noted in two earlier posts from over a year ago (HERE and HERE), FedEx continues to face questioning and investigation into its alleged use and abuse of the independent contractor classification in state and federal law. This from a June 26, 2009, Associated Press story out of Montana:

“Attorneys general from Montana and seven other states Thursday asked FedEx Corp. to ensure that FedEx Ground properly classifies its drivers to comply with state employee protection laws. In a joint letter to FedEx, the attorneys general cited shared concerns about workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, wage-and-hour laws and protection of workers’ civil rights.

“Thirty states are investigating FedEx Ground to determine if the company is misclassifying FedEx drivers as independent contractors through its owner-operator model. And more than 45 class action lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts against the company’s classification of drivers. The eight attorneys general who signed Thursday’s letter include Steve Bullock of Montana and his counterparts from Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.”

Personally, I don’t think the government should be interfering in ANY employer/employee relationships. But if everyone else is going to be forced to operate under certain laws, those laws should apply equally to FedEx.

We can’t have one law for FedEx and another for everybody else. Either put FedEx under the same law as everybody else or put everybody else under the same law as FedEx. Either way, the practice of the government picking favorites and using the law to give FedEx an unfair advantage over its competitors needs to end.