by George Hetling
On March 8, 5,800 FedEx pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA), filed a request with the National Mediation Board (NMB) to be officially released from federal mediation so that they can strike in the midst of stalled contract negotiations. This event marks nearly 3 years since contract negotiations between FedEx pilots and management began in May 2021, and nearly a year and a half since the mediation process began on October 2022.
Last year, ALPA and FedEx reached a tentative agreement which was narrowly rejected by membership in July. This deal would have raised pilot pay by 30% over four years. Mediated negotiations resumed in November, but FedEx management has since refused to offer any additional money for pilots, instead only agreeing to change the proportions of money allotted for pay rate, retirement, and benefits.
According to ALPA, FedEx Express (the cargo airline arm of FedEx) accounted for almost half of the company’s $90 billion revenue the last year, and that 18 days of flying would pay for the entire increase pilots seek in a four-year contract.
The NMB is a body established under an amendment to the Railway Labor Act during the New Deal in the 1930s which essentially grants the Federal Government the right to delay workers’ rights to strike in the airline and railroad industries indefinitely. The leaders of this body are appointed directly by the President, and must grant permission to workers in each labor dispute before a strike can go forward. The NMB was explicitly created to minimize the risk of strikes in logistics industries, which are the backbone of the US economy, which relies on ever more complex supply chains in order for monopoly companies to maintain superprofits.
In February, flight attendants likewise held pickets and rallies in protest for new contracts and pay raises at 30 airports across the US. These workers too are hamstrung by the NMB and the Railway Labor Act. The flight attendants were left out of prior successful negotiations by airline pilots last year.
This further echoes the bill that Congress and Biden rushed through back in December 2022 to block railway workers from striking, even after overcoming the many bureaucratic hurdles which airline workers face this year.
Workers in these key industries are held back by three enemies: their bosses, who exploit their labor and seek to reduce their conditions to the bare minimum of survival, regardless of their level of experience, skill, or training; the union bureaucracy, which accepts the crumbs that the monopoly capitalists want to feed these workers; and the old state, which only allows strikes as far as they do very little to impact the flow of capital.
photo: FedEx pilots protest, Airline Pilots Association
