I risk being fired by UPS for being a Libertarian

Well, I first must apologize for constantly talking about my job, but something serious has come up, and I need to document it, and also have you give me feedback and discussion.

It all started about a week ago when UPS and the Teamsters got together and decided to have all the UPS employees and all the Teamsters get together and write letters to our senators. You know this all seemed fine and dandy till I got wind of just what the bill was about.

You see, the bill is H.R. 915, and UPS and the Teamsters are trying to push this bill. The bill is about UPS wanting the government to step in, and "bailout" UPS. Now don't get me wrong, the bill is not about the government giving UPS money, but it is about government intervention on the free market.

I will give you a briefing on this bill. It all started in 1971 when FedEx was first established. You see, UPS before then had the monopoly on the shipping market, and they don't like competition. So FedEx comes along, and they are non union, so they can charge less for shipping charges. I realize that this may seem unfair to UPS, but in reality, this is how a free market works, and without competition then you have no real reason to advance in customer satisfaction, and service.

Anyway, the bill says that FedEx Express (which is the air division and corporate division of FedEx) needs to be under the same guidelines and regulations as UPS. But wait, there is a difference between how we both operate, and congress has defined FedEx Express as a RLA (Railroad labor act) company, due to the fact that they started as an airline company in 1971 for next day air service, second day air service, and third day air service (to the best of my knowledge).

UPS thinks that they are being cheated because they are under the NLRA (National Labor Relations Act), and not the RLA like FedEx Express. And since UPS is a union based company, they think they cannot compete with FedEx Express shipping prices. Well, this is in some ways true, however that is what free market is all about.

Anyway, to sum this up a bit more, FedEx has several divisions, they have FedEx Express which is the only part of FedEx that is corporately owned (I will explain in a little bit), they have FedEx ground, FedEx freight, and FedEx Office. Now the H.R. 915 is for Express companies, which only includes the FedEx Express.

Now, a bit about FedEx Ground, and FedEx freight. You see, FedEx Express is the only corporately owned division of FedEx, but all other divisions are privately owned, and are contract drivers. So all the FedEx Ground drivers you see pay for their own trucks, gas maintenance, etc. Only FedEx Express is corporately owned. If you were to try to give a FedEx Express driver a FedEx Ground package, they would not take it, as they can't due to regulations in FedEx systems, so you have to use a FedEx Express driver to use the air service as they are separate divisions of FedEx.

FedEx Ground, and FedEx freight are both under the NLRA, the same as UPS, but FedEx Express is under the RLA, which has different guidelines, one being that it is near impossible to unionize. This was established to keep railway (and air systems) from going on strike, because they are crucial to operate. Meaning that if air traffic controllers, railroads or next day air companies were to strike, all hell could break loose from the results. I am not 100% certain to these details, but I am certain of the H.R. 915 bill.

Here is the difference between UPS air, and FedEx Express that keeps these two separate classes. I work for UPS as an air driver (but primarily as a HUB employee), and the way we work is as follows. The air driver goes to the airport, picks up the air deliveries from an airplane, and takes them to a regional HUB, or package center. From there, the packages are then sorted into a ground facility that operates under the NLRA act. The packages then go to the familiar brown ground delivery truck (package cars), and they then are delivered by the said ground department. Only a slight amount of actual air deliveries are delivered by an actual air delivery vehicle (less than 15% in my local area), and that is why UPS is correctly categorized as NLRA. Now, FedEx Express is run completely different. The FedEx Express drivers do the same thing initially by picking up packages from an airplane, and then they deliver straight from the FedEx Express trucks to the customer. There is no middle man, no ground division, and no other entity to make them a ground system at all. So as you can see there is a difference. FedEx Express delivers over 85% of their packages via the air system, the remaining 15% is due to intercity delivery, meaning they pick up a package in New York City, and then deliver the said air package to a different part of New York City. It would not make sense to send this package on an airplane when it only needs to go across town…and that is the 15%.

Here is where my problem comes in. Now, I work primarily as a HUB worker. That means I load and unload truck trailers, and sort them out to the next destination, but I am also an on call air driver when the full time air driver is away. But at our HUB, and every other UPS HUB in the country, UPS has been using its employees to write letters to our senators to change these laws, claiming FedEx has an unfair advantage. That is over 400,000 letters (not counting other non UPS Teamsters) that could be written to senators…quite an impact I would say, and kind of scary seeing a company and a union doing this for personal agendas.

I was asked to go up to my supervisor’s office, along with all my fellow employees to write these letters to our senators. Well, I didn't like the sound of this. I mean why should UPS use its employees to be political when it shouldn't? Besides my boss told me it was not a political thing anyway....go figure. SO here I am being told that I do not have to write these letters to my senators. I decided not to until I found out what the bill was really about, and guess what? My boss didn't even have the bill for us to read. So I told him, I want to look into it, and find out what it was really about. At the time, I honestly didn't know, but I looked into it as I said I would, and found out this information. I didn't feel right about government intervention, so I decided not to write the letters.

The next day, I told my boss, I would not write the letters, and he kept at it like he was getting some kind of bonus out of the deal if all the employees wrote them. I still refused, but he told me he would find proof that I was wrong, and that I should write these letters. The next day he gave me an article that proved me right, but he must have misread it himself, or thought I was too stupid to read the article properly.

Anyway, the day after that, he made two other fellow employees and I go up to his office (since there were only three of us who would not write the letters), and he was still trying to persuade us to write the letters. He ended up bringing in a feeder driver (semi truck driver for UPS) in, who has two degrees in political science. He thought that this guy was going to convince us into writing the letters. Well, we got there, and I started to debate this two time degree so called master in political science. I only spoke the truth in what I had found out. He kept telling me silly stories about how he had friends who worked for a company that was not union, and they had to pay for their own equipment, gas maintenance, health care, etc...some big old sob story. I told him that his friends chose to accept that job, and no one twisted their arm in doing so. Well, he kept saying they had no choice, and I told him that if they had to, they could take a job at Burger King to pay the bills if they were so bad off. He started getting irate at this point, because he couldn't stump me...poor little me who is only speaking the truth and hasn't even a high school diploma (not to say I am uneducated).

So needless to say, he started to resort to name calling. He started furiously calling me a Libertarian, which I replied proudly that I am (that didn’t have the effect he was intending to have). He started rambling on how a Libertarian mind would not cut it, and how the ideals of Libertarianism is horrible, and cannot work if everyone wanted to have healthcare, and all the other nonsense the modern Socialists want…both Republican and Democrat. By the way, he is a diehard Obama supported as are many Teamsters.

After the name calling he resorted to putting me in classes, and told me if I ever wanted to be middle class I would have to write the letter to my senators about H.R.915, otherwise UPS would have to downsize in under 10 years, and I would be out of a job. I told him that is part of the hazards of a free market, and that I understand that fully, and accept that. I told him that I currently do not mind being lower class and my life is a happy life. Right after I said that, he decided it was not good to be classifying people, so he said let’s not talk about classes of people…even though he was the one who brought it up. Though he did repeatedly tell me I was going to lose my job, because UPS could not compete with FedEx in pricing.

By now as you can imagine my boss was getting upset as well. My boss had told every employee at the UPS HUB that this letter writing business was not about politics, which is flat out lying, as he knows good and well when you are pushing a bill, and writing to your senators it has left the regular UPS business, and delved into politics. Sadly, 99% of the employees were duped by him and felt like they had to write these letters for some kind of job security, or to be team players. Some just wrote the letters because they were promised 10 minutes of pay just to write them.

Anyway, shortly after that, my boss knew that I would not change my views on this matter, and he told the feeder driver who has two degrees, and I that we need to end this discussion. The feeder driver told me that I would never change my mind because I was a Libertarian…like we are some sort of barbaric people with wacky ideas.

Anyway that brings me to where I am now, and the reason I am writing this. I am writing this for several reasons, one being that I wanted to document this publicly because even though it is hard to get fired from a Teamsters job, both the Teamsters and my UPS boss are pushing this bill like their lives depend on it, so I doubt I will get much help from the union, and I surely will get nothing but trouble for not agreeing with my boss. You see UPS has ways of ridding problem people by writing them up for the silliest of things, and if you get three consecutive write-ups then you can get terminated. I have a friend who got a write up for simply getting a drink of water. Where I live it gets in the 100 plus degree range in the summer and even hotter in the building…so water is a must. However the supervisor deemed fit that he was disrupting production. On another occasion a co worker of mine got written up for simply smiling at a supervisor. The supervisor thought that he was smiling in an improper manner…however that can be defined I am yet to know?

The second reason I am writing this letter is to get feedback from you all to see if there is anything I should do to cover my butt from termination, or disciplinary actions. I hope you stuck with me in this incredibly long post. I didn’t mean to be so lengthy, but I had a lot to say, and sadly this is the edited version, and not the full version.

So, feel free to ask questions, and give me feedback, I would much appreciate it!

God Bless!