FedEx starts talks with pilots
FedEx and its pilots have started negotiations over new work rules, but both sides hope to avoid a nasty fight like the slugout four years ago.
"Both sides right now understand that they have to live with each other. They realize also that a strike or a conflict will hurt them both," said Gary Chaison, a professor of labor-management relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
Four years ago, under the threat of strikes and replacement workers, FedEx and the Air Line Pilots Association settled the cargo airline's first union contract for U.S. employees. Now, that contract can be amended.
It should help that this time negotiators are working on an existing contract.
"So you're working off of a basis of something rather than starting from scratch," FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz said.
The current contract took effect in 1999 after years of haggling between the pilots and a company that has consistently been averse to organized labor.
The squabbling reached a peak in December 1998 when the pilots threatened to strike during the Christmas shipping season, raising worries around the country for FedEx customers.
The strike talk also stirred up hundreds of non-flying FedEx workers who rallied in Memphis to support the company, Tennessee's largest private employer.
The strike talk ended when FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith and other senior managers began preparing to lease planes and flight crews from other companies. Pilots agreed to keep working and contract negotiations resumed.
Labor negotiations at FedEx are governed by the national Railway Labor Act, meaning the current work agreement remains in effect until it is amended.
Under federal law, the pilots' contract can be amended as of May 31 and the new negotiations got underway late last month.
"We're looking at basically a week of active negotiations every month through the end of the year," said David Webb, chairman of union's executive committee at FedEx.
While the company's 4,100 pilots plan to ask for a pay raise, their first concern is "quality of life issues," Webb said, "and specifically the kinds of schedules they're being forced to fly."
Most passenger airlines have faced serious financial trouble since the Sept. 11 attacks, and some of the biggest are cutting payrolls and seeking major work concessions from employees.
But FedEx Corp., the parent of FedEx Express, the world's largest cargo airline, is making money.
"Under no circumstances will we negotiate any concessions in view of the extensive profits FedEx has made," said Webb, a pilot captain for some of the company's biggest cargo jets.
FedEx offered only general comments on the negotiations.
"What we're looking for is a contract that's fair for everyone, the pilots, the other employees, our customers and the shareholders," Munoz said.
The pilots and the company already disagree on key matters likely to be at the heart of the talks.
The company says the average FedEx pilot makes $167,000 a year. Webb said that figure is too high, but he would not offer a pay estimate to counter the company's calculation.
FedEx also says its flyers get more time off than federal rules require and the average pilot works 13 days a month. The union, meanwhile, contends the company often forces its pilots to put in as many hours as it can and gives them little say on flight schedules.
"There's a significant loss of control once you begin a flight on when you might come back … Under current work rules, the company has the ability to non-voluntarily extend you in the field, basically for indefinite periods of time," Webb said.
FedEx flyers work mostly at night and with the company's international business growing, some are handling longer, more tiring flights, Webb said.
"We're looking at how you appropriately define hard work as opposed to less hard work to make sure the guys who are really doing the yeoman's work in this business are adequately compensated," Webb said.
While FedEx and the pilots want to avoid the kind of scraps they have gotten into in the past, contract talks can turn ugly regardless of good intentions, said business professor Chaison.
"It's not entirely a rational process that we're dealing with," he said. "Quite often there's an emotional content to bargaining, and the parties try to impress on each other their ability to inflict harm if they don't get their way."
