5/12/07
If someone were to ask you if you thought that FedEx practices Age Discrimination, what would you say? Your answer would certainly be governed primarily by your personal experience and, to a lesser degree, by what you've heard from other employees you consider trustworthy and knowledgeable. And while this may seem a bit arbitrary on my part, I have no hesitation whatsoever in stating that you would get vastly differing answers to the question from people above and below the mid-forties age bracket and above and below the 15 year seniority range. The reason for the probability of such a schism of opinions is because, as I've said several times before in articles on this site, until the bell tolls for them personally, most people choose to ignore the ringing. There's really no indictment justified toward either aforementioned age group by these differing opinions. It's nothing more than human nature that the young and inexperienced see their world through a narrower range of focus than those of us who have been around for a considerably longer time. It's equally only human that those of us who have passed the midlife point of our lives become more concerned about what's ahead of us in our lives as we come to accept that our remaining time on this planet is limited and that with each new lens prescription and pain comes the discomfiting realization that, from a purely physical aspect, our abilities are steadily waning.
Realistically speaking, I passed my midlife point long ago and it didn't take me 15 years of service with FedEx to realize that growing older and remaining employed at FedEx is, and always has been, a tenuous pursuit at best. Long before my hair began to gray, I noticed that I was rising on the seniority list at my station at a pace that made me uneasy at first. Early on in my career at FedEx, I merely dismissed the thinning of the seniority ranks above me as the by-product of the opportunities FedEx's JCA policy affords people to move to other locations they might find more desirable and into different jobs they're qualified for. Then, as time passed, and I actually became familiar enough with many of the most seniority people in my station, I began to make inquiries whenever one of them suddenly disappeared without any fanfare whatsoever. It was only at that point in my career with FedEx that I began to realize that the JCA policy wasn't nearly as responsible for my quick rise up the seniority list as I had initially and naively believed it was...
I've said elsewhere in articles on this site that I've never been a subscriber to conspiracy theories. While I've always possessed what I consider to be a healthy amount of cynicism, there's enough of a Pollyanna within me to give the benefit of a doubt whenever the situation seems appropriate. Where FedEx is concerned, however, I now realize that giving that benefit of a doubt was very naive of me. In retrospect, I suppose I should have noticed that so many disappearances of seniority employees were not preceded by the customary announcements of farewell gatherings taped to bulletin boards and broadcasted to our DADS units.
In recent years, I've heard rumors of lawsuits of varying types being brought against FedEx and in a few instances, I've actually read news articles about costly settlements being awarded the plaintiffs in such legal proceedings. Of course, by now, most everyone in the rank and file at FedEx knows that the company recently lost a whopper of a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of California's FedEx employees regarding working off the clock which forced FedEx to institute strict nationwide punch-in time policies and alter the software in our trackers and PowerPads to prevent their use during breaks. And, as I have said many times in the past, it took management being backed up against a wall for FedEx to finally make a change that they, in good conscience, should have made long ago. You can't tell me that a single manager at FedEx has been unaware that many employees work off the clock. Furthermore, you can't tell me that any FedEx manager who witnessed such activities wasn't aware that the employee who was giving his or her time to the company was doing so because of the unreasonable demands that had been placed on those employees. Yet, despite the fact that FedEx had to pay out something like $4,000 each to thousands of California FedExers, I know for a fact that FedExers still work off the clock and that managers still turn a blind eye to such extortionist charity. In fact, with the advent of the excruciatingly slow-scanning PowerPad and the gradual phase-out of the Supertracker, I'd wager my last dollar that the people at my station who are too timid to bring the scanning handicap of the PowerPad to the attention of their managers and demand a commensurate increase in their fine sort time have, and will, find ways contribute their time. After all, only California FedExers received that $4,000 reparation....
While FedEx may have succeeded in staving off further class-action lawsuits for unpaid work by posting signs and changing tracker and PowerPad software, I have a feeling that no sign or software tweak is going to fend off the knockout punch that I believe is heading inexorably toward the collective jaws of FedEx management! That knockout punch, I believe, will come in an eventual class-action lawsuit against the company for age discrimination. I am already aware of one age-discrimination suit being filed on behalf of 50+ employees which originated in California but has had employees from other parts of the country opt-in to the suit. If I understand correctly, such lawsuits could easily pave the way for a class-action suit down the road. If that is indeed the case, I have to believe that FedEx will be in BIG trouble! The reason I say this is because a statistic was recently dropped in my lap that utterly floored me! In fact, when I first received the statistic, I was so incredulous that my initial reaction was one of "It just cant be true!" However, after my incredulity gave way to a more rational state of mind, I soon realized that it was all too possible that the outrageous statistic was indeed accurate.
The way the statistic was presented to me was in the form of a very simple question.
How many FedEx employees do you think currently meet the following three criteria?
a. Are over 55 years old.
b. Have 20 or more years seniority.
c. Are working in a courier classification.
My initial response to the above question was that I would guess the answer would be a few thousand at least. That's why I was so completely shocked when the answer turned out to be.....
22!
If you're as incredulous as I initially was, just pause and take a good look around you at work tomorrow. I did, and that's what made me realize that the statistic, as fantastic as it first seems, could indeed be true. As you know, I work at GYYA, which, at least according to recent management pronouncements I've personally heard, remains the largest FedEx station in the nation. Yet, in our vast superstation, I could only ascertain that two employees met the above criteria! Just think about that for a moment! In the largest station in the country, there are only two couriers who have survived at FedEx long enough to meet the above criteria! And guess what boys and girls,... I am one of those two couriers! Talk about knowing what it feels like to be an endangered species... I wonder if I can get placed on some sort of list by the Department of the Interior or some conservation agency so that I can be protected from being rendered extinct by FedEx?
At this point, the thoughtful reader is probably as stunned as I was when the statistic was presented to me, but I am equally certain that there will be those who will simply say "So what!" when they see the statistic. After all, it's reasonably predictable that given the physical demands our job places on us, that many older couriers arrive at a point where they simply cannot do the job any longer and JCA into a less demanding position like service agent or CTV driver. However, my own eyes do not deceive me and my experience has taught me that the aforementioned simply isn't true. As a shuttle driver for the past 7+ years, I've seen a good cross section of our area's CTV drivers, and I can state emphatically that even among their ranks, few are over 55 and have 20 or more years of service. As for the area's service agents, the overwhelming majority that I have known have always been service agents. So the cold hard fact is that the dearth of couriers that meet the aforementioned criteria cannot be attributed to people seeking other less-demanding opportunities within the company. The truth is that it is FedEx management's typical reactive rather than proactive approach toward adapting its policies which has created an endangered species among its rank and file employees! All those senior employees are simply gone! They were not simply absorbed elsewhere in the company. One way or another, they were driven out of our ranks. As a manager once put it, couriers are "aging industrial athletes" and apparently, like older athletes, FedEx simply opts not to renew our contracts when we can no longer hit them out of the park.
Okay, I also know that at this point that there are some who read this who will again be saying "So what?" After all. FedEx is a business and has the reasonable expectation that each employee carry his or her own weight in keeping the business profitable. Therefore, if a courier can no longer do a particular job due to his or her age, what can the company be expected to do other than to let that employee go? But that's not what has happened to senior employees at FedEx! I would challenge anyone to cite a single example of a courier who was terminated simply because he or she had reached an age where they could no longer perform their job profitably enough to suit management's expectations. Instead, FedEx has, in so many instances, made the job of courier so complex and fraught with potential "policy violations" that many employees who, when they were hired, were given a clipboard, delivery record pad and keys to a truck or van and sent on their way, simply couldn't avoid all the additional pitfalls created by the onslaught of increasingly complex technology and the ever-expanding encroachment of micro-management. Those senior couriers didn't lose their jobs because they weren't profitable or because they failed to satisfy their customer's expectations. They were overwhelmingly culled out of our ranks by the petty minutia attendant to the aforementioned technological overkill and/or micro-management.
Employees hired at or before the time I was hired (1986), were hired to do an exquisitely simple job. You pre-tripped your vehicle, pulled packages off the belt that went to your route, placed them in whatever order necessary in your vehicle, pre-sheeted any bulkers you might have and proceeded out to your route area. Once on-road, you copied airbill numbers to your delivery record, delivered them to the customer and got their signature. Upon returning to the station, you turned in your delivery records, filled out your timecard and punched out. For PM and/or AM full-time employees, the job was slightly more involved in that they had to sign in on the DADS unit (if they had one in their vehicle) to get their pickups and to key in pickups. Those without DADS units had to periodically call the toll free dispatch number (there were pay phones everywhere in those days) to get their pickups and report pickups they had made. That was the courier job in its entirety! No supertrackers, no van scans, no PODs, no cons tags, no v41s, no iib23s, no iib07s, no F8 screens, no F1 screens and no powerpads. Is it any wonder that the ranks of senior employees at FedEx are so thinly populated today in view of the changes from the job they were originally hired to do to the present-day job of courier?
Undoubtedly, there are probably a small number of couriers who voluntarily have left FedEx because they arrived at a point where they felt they could no longer do the job but if FedEx had a proactive approach to the subject of aging couriers rather than it's customary reactive approach, I have no doubt that FedEx could retain most such employees, preserve their profitability level and keep their customers satisfied. For proof that this can be done, one need only to look at our biggest unionized competitor, UPS!
I've had a two really choice routes during my tenure at FedEx. The first such route was in the Merchandise Mart here in Chicago. The second is my present route. The thing that both routes have in common is that they are essentially single building routes. The Merchandise Mart, though only 23 stories tall at its tallest point, is a massive structure that is two city blocks long and one city block wide. My present route is the second tallest building in Chicago and while it doesn't house a large number of tenants, the sheer volume of packages it receives daily makes the route one of the heaviest in the station. However, the heavy volume of both routes is offset by the fact that both are routes completely sheltered from rain and snow and both routes require few trips in and out of the vehicle. For someone like myself, who has been plagued by arthritis in my knees for at least a decade now, such routes are, quite literally, a Godsend!
How does UPS tie into all this? It's simple really. Seniority actually means something at UPS! In the case of both of the aforementioned choice routes, both UPS employees that have those routes are high-seniority older employees. Furthermore, both have been on those routes for in excess of 20 years! Now take a look around your station and ask yourself how many of your coworkers have been on their routes for 5 years, let alone 10 or 20? At UPS, once you've bid on a route and win the bid, that route is yours unless some natural or man-made disaster wipes out the customer infrastructure of the route. At FedEx, your route is yours only so long as it suits management's current whims for you to have it. It makes no difference whatsoever how well you are doing your route either. Should your lack of experience cause you to doubt how insecure your present route is, I invite you to click here to read a portion of an earlier article on this site where I chronicle my personal experience with the inept and capricious manner in which FedEx management deals with route assignments...
Ask our brothers and sisters at UPS and DHL about missing PODs or van scans and they'll look at you as though you're speaking a foreign language. Ask them if they've ever been required to take an annual timed test to retain their jobs, and again, you'll get a puzzled look as though you're asking an idiotic question. Ask them about falsification terminations and they'll look at you as though you just stepped out of a flying saucer. Yet these are just a few of the landmines among the seemingly endless inventory of FedEx management's arsenal of weaponry that seem deliberately designed to weed out employees as we collectively attempt to tiptoe our way toward retirement. How many of our coworkers have disappeared without fanfare after stepping on one of these landmines? Is it any wonder that FedEx managers often boast about how over funded our pension plan is? Considering how successful FedEx has been in thinning out the herd (especially among it's courier ranks) is it any surprise that the fund is over funded?
The fact that seniority has historically meant nothing at FedEx beyond it's application to vacation bidding coupled with it's equally historical penchant for implementing policies and procedures choked with micro-management minutia seemingly custom-tailored to weed out older employees, has, in my opinion, placed the company in what amounts to an indefensible position where accusations of age discrimination are concerned. One can only wonder how many millions will FedEx be forced to pay out before it's typically reactive approach to problems is abandoned regarding aging employees...