We live, alas, in interesting times. As the health care debate spirals downward, the fault lines in our culture become more and more evident. On one side, anti-reformers stack town meetings to prevent any meaningful dialogue from taking place. These folks are even trying to intimidate unions. What am I missing here? Who is supposed to intimidate whom? On both sides of this momentous debate, pockets are being stuffed with special interest money. This makes the ultimate outcome – whether status quo or some degree of reform – highly suspect. The notion of genuine debate and civil discourse have disappeared altogether.
Which leads us back for a moment to the lingering conflict between UPS and FedEx. Back in December, we blogged FedEx’s unusual charter:

FedEx began 35 years ago as an airline. As such, it fell under the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which made unionization of public and commercial transport companies extremely difficult. By contrast, UPS began as a trucking company and was subject to the National Labor Relations Act from day one. UPS is unionized: they pay workers more than FedEx, they provide better benefits.

It would be to UPS’s advantage to remove their fierce competitor from the Railway Labor Act and force them to operate under the NLRA. That requires an act of congress, so it’s no surprise that UPS has been aggressively lobbying congress for this change. They say they want to level the playing field.
Level playing fields are fine. The devil is in the details: how do you accomplish your goal? Apparently, by playing unfairly. UPS has been accused of forcing union members to write to their congressmen, urging passage of legislation to eliminate the FedEx exemption. The letters bombarding congress appear to express the views of individual UPS drivers. In fact, many are based upon prescribed forms. We read in the Washington Post:

Officials with UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 240,000 UPS drivers, acknowledge that the company has paid for workers’ time to pen many of the letters and has supplied the envelopes, paper and stamps needed to mail thousands of them to Congress. UPS spokesman Malcolm Berkley said the effort was “totally voluntary, and any allegations to the contrary are ridiculous.”

But Internet sites dedicated to UPS-related discussions feature dozens of accounts from anonymous employees who in recent weeks have said they were forced to write the letters or felt they would be punished for not doing so. Such tactics could run afoul of both labor laws and lobbying disclosure requirements, according to legal experts.

So it appears that UPS may be violating labor laws in order to force FedEx to operate under labor laws. Were you expecting anything different?
Images
In one of Norman Rockwell’s many iconic images, a humbly dressed man stands up in a town meeting to express his opinion. The painting is entitled “Freedom of Speech.” We could certainly argue the degree to which such freedoms ever existed. But it’s all too clear that Rockwell’s image bears no relation to what is occurring today. If he were to depict our present situation, we would see an enraged citizen shouting down his local congressman. This individual would waive an inflammatory poster complete with Nazi symbols. In his pocket, we might glimpse the bus ticket that brought him into town. In the corner we might see an innocent mother, huddling to protect her child from the pending violence.
We are currently facing many complex issues, ranging from FedEx’s status as an employer to the health care options for every American. There are pros and cons to every path. No one really knows how to get from point A to point B. Indeed, we may not even agree on what point B is. But when civil discourse deteriorates into the ravings of the mob, we all lose. If winning is defined by who shouts the loudest, who cheats the most effectively, who succeeds in intimidating the oppostion, there will be no victory for anyone.