Bob McCarty Writes

Two months ago, I published a post (see “What Has ‘Brown’ Done for You Lately?” that included a video about efforts by UPS (a.k.a., “Big Brown”) to get a “bailout” from Congress in the form of legislation that would change the federal law under which competitor FedEx operates.  In turn, the legislation would cause Big Brown’s Memphis-based competitor to become more unionized and, thus, more expensive for its customers.  Today, I share a similar video below, courtesy of Reason.TV.

In a related article, the folks at Reason explain more about the cases, including the differences between the different federal laws under which the delivery companies operate:

• FedEx Express, the company’s air delivery service, operates under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), instituted in 1926 to arbitrate labor disputes in industries (including, by 1936, airlines) that are deemed vital to interstate commerce. Under this law, in order to be recognized, a union must receive a majority of votes from all a company’s employees, rather than merely a majority of those who choose to vote. That makes it much more difficult for labor to organize. As a result, FedEx Express, and therefore FedEx, have been mostly union-free for decades.

• UPS, by contrast, operates under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, commonly known as the Wagner Act). This Depression-era law allows unionization at each individual office of a national company, thereby significantly lowering the barriers to labor organizing. As a result, UPS is one of the largest unionized companies in the country. (Like UPS, the FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight divisions of FedEx are covered by the NLRA.)

Keep an eye on this one, folks!