REGIONAL MOTOR FREIGHT
transportationreport
As FedEx and UPS spar over a vital labor issue,
reality threatens to take a back seat to perception.
IN A MID-MARCH INTERVIEW WITH BLOOMBERG NEWS, FEDEX CORP. CHAIRMAN
Frederick W. Smith revealed that in 2001, he had arranged a meeting with Jim Kelly, then chairman
of rival UPS Inc., to discuss ways ground workers at FedEx’s air express unit and at UPS could both
be covered under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), a federal labor law that applies only to airlines and
railroads. (While FedEx workers are governed by the RLA, UPS is covered by a separate law.)
The meeting was set for Sept. 13, 2001, Smith told Bloomberg. But it was canceled after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks and never rescheduled, he said.
UPS has a different version of events. No meeting between the companies was ever on the calendar,
according to Malcolm Berkley, a Washington-based UPS spokesman.
The anecdote demonstrates that in business, like war, often the first casualty is the truth. And few
would dispute that the history of FedEx and UPS has been anything other than warlike. For well over
30 years, the companies have fought over market share, shipper hearts and minds, and just about anything concerned with one-upping the other.
