1947, has been covered by the National
Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a law enacted 12 years prior and which still covers
workers in all other industries, including
trucking. Unlike the RLA, the NLRA permits workers to locally organize and does
not compel the federal government to
intervene to stop a job action.
UPS has long chafed under what it sees
as an unlevel playing field. In 1993, UPS
asked the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB), the agency that administers the
NLRA, to reclassify its operations under
the RLA. The NLRB refused to do so, and
a federal appeals court upheld its decision
in August 1996.
Fourteen years later, the fight is coming
to a head on Capitol Hill. In 2009, the
House passed a Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) funding bill with
language that would place all FedEx
Express workers, except for pilots and aircraft maintenance employees, under the
NLRA. The language was added by Rep.
James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman
of the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee. UPS has long
lobbied for the provision.
The Senate subsequently passed a version of the FAA funding measure that did
not include the controversial language.
Two of its most vocal opponents were
Republican Senators Lamar Alexander
and Bob Corker, both from FedEx’s home
state of Tennessee.
The FAA measure has been surviving
on a series of funding extensions, the
most current of which is set to expire July
3. In the interim, both chambers are
scheduled to meet to reconcile their
respective bills.
Jim Berard, chief spokesman for the
House Committee, said he expects
Oberstar to continue to push for his language to be included in the reconciled
version. “He’s been supporting this since
1996, and I don’t see him backing away, at
least not without a fight,” Berard said.
FedEx’s Smith won’t go gently, either.
Any adverse change in the law, he warned,
will trigger the cancellation of a multibil-lion dollar, 15-plane order of Boeing 777
freighters as well as a third optional set of
15 more. “Mr. Smith was on the record
[with his warning] and meant everything
he said,” said FedEx spokesman
Maury Lane.
Looking for the union label?
UPS may be seeking a legislative
remedy because it has so far made
little headway on the administrative
and judicial fronts. In its 1996 deci-
sion affirming the NLRB’s refusal to
reclassify UPS’s operations under the
RLA, the appellate court ruled that
FedEx’s air service and the trucking
operations that support it are essen-
tially a single airline unit, with the
trucking operations totally depend-
ent on its air business. The court said
