FedEx Worker Hospitalized After Collapsing From Heat During Shift

On June 18, 2026, a worker at the FedEx World Hub in Memphis, Tennessee, was hospitalized after succumbing to severe overheating while on the job. The hospitalized worker, Darius Smith (name changed for privacy), spoke with a volunteer for The Worker about his hospitalization and workplace conditions.

Smith’s job at FedEx is to unload baggage carts full of heavy packages. During the summertime, despite working indoors at night, temperatures in his work area can reach up to 90° Fahrenheit, since he works directly below heavy machinery, which generates a lot of heat. Combined with high humidity and hours of strenuous physical labor, these conditions put workers in danger of overheating.

Towards the end of Smith’s shift, after most of the other workers in his section had completed their shifts, he was forced to unload a large number of packages on his own. After a while, he began to feel weak, and his muscles began to cramp. He eventually had to stop working and lie down on the floor in order to cool off. To his alarm, he found himself unable to stand up again.

After about ten minutes, he was able to get the attention of another worker passing by and asked them to call for help. He was taken to the first aid station inside the FedEx warehouse. After those staffing the first aid station determined that they were unable to help him, Smith was taken to a hospital, where he was rushed to the Emergency Room for severe overheating and dehydration.

At the ER, medical staff determined that Smith had lost so much water from sweating that his kidneys were beginning to fail. It took four bags of IV fluids to replenish all the water he had lost. After spending a day recovering in the hospital, he was released.

After his release from the hospital, Smith was written up for a “safety violation” by FedEx. He told The Worker that it is very common for workers to be written up at FedEx when they are involved in an accident, even when the workers are not at fault. In his case, since FedEx is cutting the hours of its workers, he was left alone to do the job of several people once the other workers had left.

Despite FedEx’s motto of “safety above all,” Smith stated that there was a period of two years during which their mandatory safety meetings were not held. Furthermore, since the infrastructure inside the FedEx hub is several decades old, much of the equipment itself is inherently unsafe to use. Little is done to address safety hazards, so workers must maintain constant vigilance to avoid being injured.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have flagged environmental heat as a growing threat to the health and safety of workers as temperatures rise year over year. Meanwhile, the implementation of OSHA’s proposed federal heat injury and illness rules has been repeatedly delayed by the Trump administration, while summers keep getting hotter and the capitalists keep driving up work tempos.

In the last decade, several workers have died while working at the FedEx World Hub in Memphis, killed by the breakneck pace at which the package shipping monopoly forces them to work. In 2024, the monopoly unveiled an automated sorting facility at the World Hub, which is the largest FedEx facility in the world. Like other shipping monopolies, FedEx has responded to the economic crisis over the past few years by laying off workers, shuttering facilities, and employing more labor-replacing machinery in pursuit of higher profitability at the expense of workers.

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Image: FedEx World Hub in Memphis, TN. Credit: Panoramio.

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