Jacksonville, FL – Despite ‘competing’ as the world's two largest parcel delivery and shipping companies, UPS and FedEx are owned by many of the same banks. According to NASDAQ's ownership summary of both companies, 12 of the top 20 owners of UPS and FedEx are the same banks, investment groups and financial institutions.

Both multi-billion dollar corporations are under 'institutional ownership', which means that a majority of their shares are owned by financial institutions, banks and other large monopoly corporations. According to NASDAQ's ownership summary of UPS on April 11, nearly 71% of UPS shares are owned by institutions. FedEx, a smaller company than UPS, actually had greater institutional ownership, with 83.94% of the company's shares owned by institutions, according to NASDAQ.

However, most of the largest institutional owners of both UPS and FedEx have substantial interests in both companies. For instance, Vanguard Group Inc., a Pennsylvania-based investment bank that manages nearly $2 trillion in assets, is the single-largest owner of UPS and the third largest owner of FedEx. Vanguard Group is a massive financial institution that boasts the largest ownership in many other large, well-known corporations including Apple, Exxon Mobil and Microsoft.

Primecap Management Company, based in Pasadena, California, is the largest owner of FedEx, holding nearly 19 million shares of the shipping company, according to NASDAQ. However, Primecap is also the 16th largest owner of UPS stock, holding more than 6.3 million shares, also according to NASDAQ.

In all, 60% of the top 20 owners of both UPS and FedEx are the same banks, investment groups and financial institutions.

Institutional ownership is incredibly common among the largest 500 publicly traded companies.

Despite this fact, companies like UPS stress to workers the need to “compete” against rival workers in their industry, like those at FedEx. UPS's collective bargaining agreement includes an entire article on competition that states: “The Union recognizes that the Employer is in direct competition with…other firms engaging in the distribution of express letter, parcel express, parcel delivery, and freight, both air and surface.”

The company leverages this poison pill of competition to justify subcontracting union work and undermining union standards. It creates an adversarial relationship between workers of UPS and FedEx, when in reality the owners at the top are united in extracting the most profit possible from workers at both companies. When the owners of UPS and FedEx are one in the same, ‘competition’ means which management team can exploit their workers the most and extract the most profit for the banks that own the whole industry.

A prominent argument used by UPS claims that workers must accept concessionary contracts to remain ‘competitive.’ They argue that employing tried-and-true militant tactics, like striking as the Teamsters did successfully in 1997, will result in FedEx stealing UPS’s customers. Historically, the union movement addressed this by organizing entire industries, instead of single worksites or employers. This meant one industry, one union, and at times – one contract. At its best, this method of organizing and bargaining takes wages out of competition and sets industry-wide standards to prevent subcontracting and a race to the bottom through ‘competition.’ Tactically, if the 1% owners of both brands are united, then to combat them and win, workers across the entire industry must also unite.

The attempts of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to organize FedEx have been foiled by U.S. labor law, which misclassifies workers and stifles their ability to unionize. FedEx Ground drivers are misclassified as independent contractors and are legally barred from union representation, even though in practice, they are effectively workers directly employed by the company. FedEx Express drivers are also misclassified under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), as opposed to the National Labor Relations Act. The company claims their employees are ‘airline’ workers, and thus would need to unionize nationally all at once. The RLA also places many more restrictions on workers’ rights, including the ability to strike. It also forces the workers into binding arbitration, which often serve the interest of the boss instead of the workers.

The banks and financial institutions that own both UPS and FedEx are united in their push for lower wages, part-time poverty jobs, fewer benefits and weaker contracts. To effectively fight their race to the bottom, union workers at UPS must organize FedEx workers, regardless of the legal fictions created by politicians in Washington.

Dave Schneider and Dustin Ponder are both rank-and-file Teamsters and members of Part-Time Power at UPS, which is a national group for UPS part-timers.

#JacksonvilleFL #Teamsters #UPS #Capitalism #FedEx #antiunionBusting #workersRights #Banks

The story asserted that “decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers” had brought the Postal Service to the point of defaulting on a $5.5 billion payment due Sept. 30, and possibly shutting down entirely this winter.

The Times detailed the drastic cuts proposed by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe: No more Saturday delivery, closure of 3700 post offices and 300 sorting facilities nationwide, elimination of 220,000 jobs. Most of these moves require Congressional approval and the threatened shutdown was clearly supposed to help Congress make up its mind.

What wasn’t mentioned in the article: The $5.5 billion payment in question is part of a bizarre requirement imposed upon the USPS by Congress five years ago to prefund its retiree health benefits 75 years in advance over a ten-year period. In effect, the Postal Service is paying for the retirement of workers who haven’t even been born yet, let alone hired. Imagine the outcry if the feds made similar demands on private businesses!

Also unmentioned by the Times: Donahoe’s announcement came just as the post office was scheduled to enter contract negotiations with the National Association of Letter Carriers.

Forking over those annual $5.5 billion payments has cost the USPS $20 billion in operating losses over the past four years. Without them, the Postal Service would still be in the black, despite a big falloff in mail volume when the economy went south three years ago.

If Congress was serious about preventing the drastic service cutbacks Donahoe has proposed, there’s an obvious solution: End the prefunding requirement.

For those who hope to strip postal workers of their union rights, however, the prospect of a default presents a golden opportunity.

Representative Darrell Issa is the chair of the House Committee on Government Operations. Strictly speaking, the USPS is not a government operation and it receives no federal funds. Still, Issa’s committee is charged with overseeing it.

As a young man, according to a January profile in the New Yorker, Issa was busted twice for auto theft . Both times he managed to escape prosecution. Today he is the richest member of the House, having made a fortune in the car alarm business.

Issa has proposed a bill that would require the Postal Service to cut its expenses by $3 billion a year. If it failed to do so, its affairs would be put in the hands of a politically appointed commission with the power to scrap its collective bargaining agreements and slash wages and benefits.

I don’t know that the Postmaster General wants Issa’s bill to pass. I do know that he’s employing the same strategy. He’s using an essentially manufactured crisis to apply the screws to his work force.

To an alarming extent, the media is buying the story. The New York Times makes an issue of the fact that labor costs account for 80% of USPS expenses, “compared with 53% at United Parcel Service and 32% at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors.”

It’s a meaningless comparison. Neither FedEx nor UPS is charged with maintaining a universal service network, a task that requires human labor. When its customers need to ship to a location it doesn’t handle, UPS typically contracts with the Postal Service for “last mile” delivery. Unlike FedEx, the Postal Service does not sink a big chunk of its revenues into maintaining its own fleet of planes. It does not spend millions lobbying Congress, investing in other businesses or paying off stockholders. Whatever money it makes is ploughed back into operations.

And, for what it’s worth, there’s no significant difference in pay and benefits between the Postal Service and UPS, whose drivers are under Teamster contract. Despite a 30-year-old no-layoff clause in its union contracts, the USPS has managed to reduce its work force by nearly 30% in the past ten years. In my district, there’s a hiring freeze which has left some offices so understaffed that veteran carriers are routinely required to work 60-hour weeks.

Retiring workers are not replaced – or if they are, it’s with ‘transitional employees’ who enjoy rudimentary union protection but have no benefits, job security, seniority or bidding rights. Supposedly hired as a temporary expedient when the post office was introducing new mail sorting machinery, the “TEs” have emerged as a permanent feature of the postal work force and spend years vainly waiting for promotion to career status. They can be laid off at any time.

In the private sector, ‘downsizing’ is considered good business strategy, and ‘leaner, meaner’ companies are the ones that attract investors. Typically, what’s involved is the shift of capital from productive parts of the economy to the financial sector, where few workers are employed but the profit margins are enormous – or used to be, before the Wall Street meltdown of fall 2008.

The social costs of business downsizing are enormous, but there’s a certain crazy logic to it: under capitalism, businesses exist to make money. But downsizing the Postal Service makes no sense at all. For all the politicians’ prattle about the USPS needing a new “business model,” the post office isn’t really a business. It’s a public service, mandated by the U.S. Constitution. It reaches every household and business address in the country; its universal service network, built up over two centuries, is as much a part of the nation’s infrastructure as our interstate highways or public schools.

But its workers are unionized, so it’s fair game. Just as our public schools are being crippled as scarce tax dollars are diverted into corporate-run, non-union charter schools, reactionary forces in Congress are hell-bent on compromising the nation’s mail service beyond repair as the necessary price of busting the postal unions. In the process, the public is being robbed of a vital public service, and the right of all workers to union protection is further undermined.

Sept. 30 is the deadline for the USPS to make the $5.5 billion payment Congress demands. On Sept. 27, the four postal unions will be demonstrating at local Congressional offices across the country in an effort to get the truth out. Go to saveamericaspostalservice.org to find out where the demonstration in your area will be happening. Then come out and join it – to keep the mail moving and to stand with the brothers and sisters who move it.

Peter Shapiro is a retired member of National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 82 and is active in Jobs with Justice.

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