Fraudex Update: Northboro, MA

Chapter 1: Fraudex talks tough, throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 2007-- claiming they welcome the chance to have their day in court and defend themselves against charges levelled by the Bush-appointed NLRB. Now, this Republican NLRB is the most anti-union NLRB in the history of the agency. When they file charges against a company, you know that company has violated even late 19th century standards of labor relations.


Tuesday, May 8, 2007 FedEx denies claims, Union alleges unfair practices

By Martin Luttrell TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFFmluttrell@telegram.com

NORTHBORO— FedEx Home Delivery has denied allegations by the Teamsters union that it harassed and fired drivers at its Lyman Street terminal for taking part in union organizing activity. In a nine-page response to complaints brought March 30 by the National Labor Relations Board, the company denied that it engaged in unfair labor practices, and took issue with allegations by Teamsters Local 170 in Worcester that the drivers were company employees. FedEx considers the drivers to be independent contractors. The complaint alleges that the company pressured delivery drivers to admit if they had attended union meetings, planned on joining and to inform on others who supported the union. Workers who testified at an earlier NLRB hearing to determine if the workers were company employees or independent contractors were also threatened by the company, the complaint alleges.

“We believe these allegations are false, and look forward to the opportunity to have the issue heard before the board this summer,” said Maury S. Lane, a FedEx spokesman at the company’s headquarters in Memphis, Tenn. A hearing into the complaint will begin June 18 at the NLRB’s office in Boston. Michael P. Hogan, secretary-treasurer for Local 170, said the union is prepared for a long fight. “You would think nothing ever happened at FedEx, that there was no organizing drive,” Mr. Hogan said. “It will be interesting to see how that plays out. We’ve seen what the workers have gone through, and it’s atrocious. “To this day, FedEx won’t even come to the conclusion that that these folks are employees. We’re anxious, but we know it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” The company said that it did not fire employees, but rather, terminated its contractual relationships with the four drivers. “There can be no violation as a matter of law because the alleged discriminatees are not employees, and are therefore excluded from coverage…” the company’s April 13 response states. The company took the actions for “legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons unrelated to any contractor’s alleged union activity or affiliation,” the response continues. Mr. Hogan said 95 percent of the drivers signed union cards in November 2005. A vote to determine if the Teamsters would be the drivers’ collective bargaining unit, set for February 2006, was postponed.



Chapter 2:


NORTHBORO— Fraudex forced the U.S. taxpayers to spend a lot of money for the NLRB to prepare a trial, because, as they claim again and again, Fraudex knows labor law better-- than any labor lawyer, state or federal judge.

Up to the day before the trial was scheduled to start, FedEx consistently pronounces its own innocence, and puts forward eagerness to get the true story out as its only motive for appealing beyond the regional Labor Relations Board to Washington D.C. Somehow FedEx changed its mind on "getting the truth out." They settled out of court-- to keep details from the public eye, and to avoid risking a negative judgement.


Chapter 2: Too little, too late?

FedEx Corporation [NYSE: FDX] subsidiary FedEx Home Delivery has agreed to pay five former and present drivers a total $253,000 to settle a series of unfair labor charges brought by the National Labor Relations Board against the company.
The five drivers-four former and one present driver-all worked in the Northboro, Massachusetts Home Delivery terminal and were union supporters in a unionization drive in 2005 and 2006 by Teamsters Local 170. The NLRB also ordered an election in Northboro for February 2008.
"FedEx has delayed this process long enough and the Northboro drivers will get their right to vote," said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. "I'm outraged at FedEx's treatment of these workers. This small amount of compensation is not enough to undo the damage that FedEx has done to their lives."
The unionization effort centered on the employee status of the drivers in the Northboro facility. The drivers gave sworn testimony to the NLRB that FedEx Home Delivery controlled their daily work like employees but called them "independent contractors."
The NLRB ruled that the drivers were employees and ordered an election that was to take place in January 2006. FedEx Home Delivery then illegally harassed, intimidated terminated the four former drivers to prevent a legal union election. The NLRB charged FedEx in a June 2007 consolidated complaint with numerous unfair labor practice charges for the illegal acts. The October 25 settlement between the drivers the company came out of the NLRB charges.
"We backed the company right against the wall because we stood up to management and had all the answers when it came to their anti-union meetings," said driver Richard Lacina. "FedEx paid me thousands of dollars because they violated my rights and I am still employed as a driver. This shows everybody the power of the Teamsters Union and what it can do for you."
Teamsters Local 170 and the company also agreed to schedule an election at the Northboro facility as a result of NLRB charges. The election is to occur on February 1, 2008.
"The Teamsters have stuck by these workers and the five drivers at least got some degree of justice," said Teamsters Local 170 Secretary-Treasurer Mike Hogan. "The Northboro drivers have seen the worst that FedEx can throw at them, and in the end the workers will have their vote to take control of their lives and their future."
FedEx Home Delivery drivers at three facilities in Wilmington, Massachusetts and Windsor, Connecticut already voted for Teamster representation in 2006 and 2007. FedEx ignored NLRB orders to bargain and appealed previous NLRB rulings to the U.S. Court of Appeal District of Columbia Circuit.
A recent report by American Rights at Work and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights document the anti-union campaign and patterns of discrimination at FedEx Ground and Home Delivery in Northboro and elsewhere.

Stay tuned...

Spun out of control

Our Wild Western friend, The Existentialist Cowboy, has a fantastic post on why any U.S. PR offensive now launched is doomed to failure:

At a time when some 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in those "areas covered by the US military 'surge'", Bush efforts to define those thrown into any US facility as "terrorist" is absurd. An arbitrary exception to Due Process is thus made for people "accused" of being terrorist, though they are never formally "accused" or charged. They just "are". Bush says so.Terrorism is whatever Bush says it is. Terrorism should be dealt with by intelligence personnel and law enforcement. "Terrorism" as consisting of specific, prosecutable crimes should be treated like any other intelligence and law enforcement problem. It is understandable that Bush would not want to do so. To so treat those crimes robs him of the power he seeks. It deprives him of the various pre-texts he needs to wage war on the world. Free of "terrorist" distractions, the utterly failed and corrupt nature of Bush's miserable regime would become apparent even to his corrupt GOP base.

This corrupt Cheney/Bush regime never stood for much. Now it is merely lurching here and there in a desperate attempt to ensure its own survival. The big lie, however, has been exposed. The war crimes of these sick puppies are not in any way related to a genuine "war on terror." A genuine "war on terror," would combine very narrowly focussed attempts to bring down some real terrorist monsters like Osama bin Laden (hint to CIA: he isn't currently living in either Iraq or Iran), with a dramatic attempt to win the hearts and minds of the world by beginning to genuinely address the real, and perceived, inequities that poison so many minds against the U.S.

What the Cheney/Bush junta has established, however, is something very different. They have created (in classic 1984 Orwellian style) a permanent war mobilization as a pretext for hijacking a free country and turning it into a police state. This process is only in its early phases. If we are "allowed" to hold free and fair elections in 2008, and (unlike in 2000) actually install the new government we elect-- then, maybe our constitutional republic can be restored. Remember folks: eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!

A dose of reality

The Cheney/Bush administration, and its Republican allies in Congress, managed to forestall a cutoff in funding for the Iraqi troop surge by making an unprecedented promise. In September, Gen. Petraeus would present to the American people a full, sober, unvarnished assessment of the stategy's success. The promise bought more time, but also raised expectations that, for the first time, the administration would have to reassess their policy based on an objective assessment of the reality on the ground.

Well, September draws nigh... the situation in Iraq is as bad as ever, and naturally the White House is trying to weasel out of its commitment to the American people. As Julian Barnes and Peter Spiegel reported in last Wednesday's LA Times: "Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government." This is a stunning admission, because it reveals that the White House doesn't feel it can rely on its own hand-picked General to grossly distort the reality on the ground.

So, since General Petraeus' role has been reduced to that of a Faux News broadcaster-- namely reading Cheney/Bush administration talking points out loud-- how can we learn the real situation on the ground in Iraq?

An op.ed. piece in Sunday's New York Times, written by active-duty military officers in Iraq, is very helpful in this regard:

August 19, 2007
New York Times
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families….

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.