The following letter-to-the-editor by Bob Lekites, President of UPS Airlines, appeared in today’s Louisville (KY) Journal:
Imagine going to a baseball game. On the surface, it appears to be a fair game with both teams playing by the same rules. Later, you find out that a loophole allows the opposing team to use corked bats, which are lighter and give its batters a faster swing and improved timing. For every other team in the league, corked bats are prohibited — except for this one.
Is this fair? It is if you’re FedEx, only the stakes are much higher than a baseball game.
FedEx has recently undertaken a very public lobbying and media campaign to prevent Congress from enacting legislation to bring it under the same labor laws that govern every other delivery company in America.
To meet the needs of the modern economy, package delivery businesses such as UPS and FedEx operate integrated networks that utilize both air and ground transportation. Despite the fact that the drivers in those networks do the same work, drive the same kinds of trucks and follow similar schedules, they are governed by different labor laws.
Congress is trying to fix this inconsistency, but FedEx, which has benefitted from this inequity in labor law for years, is falsely claiming the change would reduce access to global markets, increase its costs and impact its reliability. All of this noise is just an attempt to distract from the fact that they’re using corked bats.
The law that FedEx is working so hard to prevent would only ensure that employees who perform the same job at competing companies are covered by the same law.
I started at UPS 34 years ago as a driver. After two decades of working my way up in our ground business, I shifted to the air express side, where I’ve managed operations for the past 12 years. I have learned both UPS and FedEx inside and out, and I can tell you unequivocally that our people do the same jobs and should be governed by the same law.
Why is all this important to the people of Kentucky? Beyond the 32,000 jobs UPS and its business partners have created in the Bluegrass, it’s a matter of fairness.
Our nation’s commitment to fairness is what protects individuals and businesses large and small. We all lose when certain companies and individuals think they don’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else.
It’s time to get back to basics. Fair is fair, and the law should apply equally to delivery drivers doing the same work.