FedEx’s disinformation campaign is flying high
By Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach -
In “Congress should move forward with vital air safety bills” (June 21), David J. Bronczek, president and CEO of FedEx Express, laments that the FAA reauthorization bill remains in limbo:
“The holdup is a 230-word provision inserted into the House bill that would change the federal labor law that governs FedEx Express, one of the world’s largest airlines. The provision is extraneous to the legislation, having no broad impact on air safety or infrastructure upgrades.
FedEx Express is not an airline; at least not in the way most regular people think of airlines. It is, in reality, a package delivery company that uses both airplanes and trucks to provide its services. So is UPS. And it, too, uses both airplanes and trucks to deliver its packages.
The provision being debated is actually an effort to remove an extraneous provision which gave FedEx this special treatment in the 1996 FAA re-authorization bill in the first place.
The provision isn’t “anti-competitive.” Indeed, just the opposite. All it does is level the playing field by taking away what amounts to letting FedEx “hit from the ladies’ tees.”
This provision doesn’t “unfairly benefit one company.” This provision repeals a previous provision that has unfairly benefited one company, FedEx, for over a decade.
FedEx has been trying to justify this special treatment under the law by referring to its so-called “integrated air-ground delivery system.” Now consider for a moment exactly what this would mean if a real airline took the same position.
Suppose Delta expanded its operations by adding a taxicab service and called it Delta Express. And borrowing from the FedEx fantasy, let’s say Delta claimed its new taxicab drivers were picking up and dropping off passengers as part of an “integrated air-ground delivery system.” Would any objective person think those new Delta Express cab drivers were pilots who should be treated under federal labor law differently from every other cab driver in the nation?
This is not a complicated issue. This provision in the FAA bill rights a wrong in federal labor law.