By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the April 5 print edition of Transport Topics.
The U.S. House re-passed its version of Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization legislation on March 25, which included a provision that would allow employees of FedEx Corp.’s Express unit to organize more easily.
In a procedure the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee called “unusual,” the full body voted 276-145 to combine the original House-passed FAA reauthorization and an airline safety bill and amend the Senate bill with them.
The House bill includes the provision that would place FedEx Express drivers under the National Labor Relations Act, which allows unions to organize a company on a terminal-by-terminal basis, rather than under the Railway Labor Act, which requires organization on a nationwide basis.
FedEx opposes the provision, which was left out of the bill the Senate passed on March 22. Fed-Ex’s rival, UPS Inc., supports the measure (3-29, p. 24).
The House has now passed a bill with the provision in it three separate times, but on the floor, Republicans and Democrats continued to spar over it.
“This change would remove the disparity in current law that Federal Express drivers are governed under the RLA, which requires organization for collective bargaining on a nationwide basis, while drivers for the United Parcel Service and other express carriers are governed by the NLRA, which permits organization on a local basis,” said Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the transportation panel’s aviation subcommittee, said because the provision is included, it “is impossible for me to support” the bill, despite the numerous safety improvements that it makes.
“This is really targeted at one company: FedEx Express. FedEx Express was organized as, and still is, an air carrier — in particular, an express carrier. As such, it’s been covered by the Railway Labor Act since its creation in 1971,” Petri said. “It has trucks, but it is a fully integrated system, and the trucks would not operate without the planes . . . I’d note that other companies within the FedEx family, such as FedEx Freight, are rightly covered by the National Labor Relations Act.”
With the bill now passed, the House and Senate will meet to work out the differences in their two pieces of legislation.
Before adjourning for the Easter recess, Congress passed an extension of the current FAA reauthorization to keep the program running through the end of April.
