Gnaw

Obama said he was "surprised" to receive the award. What would Trump say? I guess we'll never know.

Andy

William Gladstone in the UK, Warren G Harding in the US.

badflaps

I think Harry S. was pretty tight. Enough that he was broke on retirement. Unheard of these days. ($22,000. a month rent for Barry.)

TransWorld

Harry lived in the House his mother in law left him. When he left office, he went on vacation, driving his car from Independence (suburb of Kansas City, Mo) to the northeast. Either in Penn or NY a state police officer pulled him over. No traffic violation. He was just creating a crowd on the Highway, people could not believe he was driving his own car on vacation. They wanted to see him. He would wave at them. Real friendly.

After he built the Truman library, just up the street from his house, he would walk up very early in morning (remember he grew up on a farm) and walk home for lunch and a nap. He got correspondence done sitting at his Oval Office desk replica. He had no other office. I think he even wrote checks to pay his bills sitting at that desk. People knew if they called the library early in the morning, he would answer the phone. No use paying someone to be there at 5 or 6 am, when he could answer it himself. He even gave some people tours before the library opened.

That is being pretty tight, and very practical. And very down to earth. He felt like he was just an average person, doing the work of the citizens.

TonyC

I'm not disparaging anything, just correcting VSTOLG4's misconception and making an observation about the so-called bonuses for FedEx employees. He said he'd "certainly take the bonus" as a FDX pilot. FDX pilots won't receive any bonus. He said he hopes our ramp workers get a bonus. They won't, either.

I'm guessing you've never worked in Domestic Ground Operations (DGO). I have, years ago, and I'm closely related to someone who currently works in DGO, so I think I know a little bit about the topic. The vast majority of DGO jobs are part-time. That's the nature of our business. The work comes in waves separated by lulls, not in steady 8-hour shifts. That means a lot of short days, or short bursts of work separated by long, unproductive and unpaid breaks where the employee can't really leave and go home or go to another job, but he's not paid, either. And while the job comes with pretty good perks -- 401k contributions, tuition reimbursement, health care insurance, and paid vacation, to name a few -- it's still a part-time job, which guarantees only 17.5 hours per week. And while it's a part-time job, FedEx expects the employee to treat it like his ONLY job, or at least his PRIMARY job. If FedEx wants the ramper to come in early or stay late, FedEx expects the ramper to comply.

The schedule and demands of this "primary" part-time job present significant challenges to working at a second job, but 17.5 hours per week of pay won't exactly support a small family. It's a great starter job for a high-school graduate, and many employees use it to work up the ladder in hopes of better pay and full-time status, but many, many, many DGO part-timers leave FedEx for something more stable and rewarding. Schedule and pay are only two of the reasons why we have a chronic under-manning issue at the hubs in Memphis, Indianapolis, and other hubs and sort facilities and local ramps.

FedEx is very careful to advance and protect its image, and I'm glad they are. I'd like to think they'll still have a great corporate image when my wife or I (whichever endures the longer) collects the last retirement check before passing. I don't think I'm being over-cynical, however, to note that the primary motivation for jumping on the "bonus bandwagon" was not to reward employees, but to enhance its corporate image. With all the talk lately about companies giving their employees bonuses, with $1,000 being the most frequent amount mentioned, it's important when a bunch of corporate logos are splashed on the TV screen during discussion of those bonuses that the FedEx logo is prominently displayed among them. I don't even remember which company announced their $1,000 bonus first, but so many have joined the chorus now ... Home Depot, Lowe's, AT&T, ... even Wal*Mart is giving bonuses up to $1,000. Of course, there's fine print, and it turns out that some people will get that much, most will get less, but who has time for fine print, anyway? StarBucks is rewarding employees ... how could FedEx be left out?

Like I said, most DGO employees are Part Time, and that means a 17.5 hours per week guarantee. Every year they expect to receive a small increase in pay. That might amount to roughly a dollar, so a ramper making $12/hr last year might expect to make $13/hr this year. It's not uncommon for him to then learn that the guy who was hired a week ago is also making $13 /hr because that's what it takes to recruit new rampers this year. Those pay raises usually occur in October. The FedEx "corporate tax-break bonus" is the decision to advance this year's pay raise by 6 months -- an early pay raise. If the increase in $1, the same part-time employee will see an extra $17.50 in each week's paycheck, before taxes, for a total increase of $455, which is in the neighborhood of 2 weeks pay.

Nothing to sneeze at, but, like VSTOLG4 intimated, I think they deserve better.

Nothing to sneeze at, but not exactly the numbers one might imagine when they read $3.2 BILLION in the press release headline. Let's take a quick peek at the 3 components of the plan.

Quick, how much is FedEx setting aside for DGO hourly employees, which includes our "rampers"?

Not $3.2 billion. $1.5 billion is designated for capital improvements to Indy and Memphis hubs. The Indy Hub project was announced last year in an announcement that included the need for 125 new full-time and 450 part-time employees. Have you been to Indy the past few months? They're already 700 employees short every night.

Not $1.7 billion, either. Another $1.5 billion will be a voluntary contribution to our pension fund. That money will be borrowed (they sold 10- and 30-year bonds), so it must be assumed that the rising market will more than offset the costs of the borrowing, minus the credits they'll claim for it. (By the way, our pension fund, which includes ALL FedEx employees, not just us greedy pilots, was already highly funded, in fact at 88% when last reported last May.)

That leaves $200 million for actual investment in employees, but that's not the number, either. Only two-thirds of that amount will go to hourly employees, which includes DGO employees, which includes rampers. Wow. $133 million to be divvied up among all the hourly employees. That's barely more than StarBucks announced it would be spending. Let's revise that headline:
Again, ask yourself why we have such a hard time getting a full complement of rampers to work on cold, wet, windy nights.

The other $67 million of bonuses will go to ... let's see, how did they word that ... "performance- based incentive plans for salaried personnel." That's press release lingo for MBO (Management By Objectives) bonuses -- the culture cancer that continues to infect our bureaucracy. That's another thread which has been discussed long ago.






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BobZ

So your point is all things considered...everyone at fedx would have been better off having none of this happen?

TonyC

Sure, BobZ, that's precisely what I said.


If that's what you got out of my post, I doubt there's any way I can help you understand. Too many words in my post for you to handle, right?






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BobZ

well I stayed with it all the way through.

corporations as with most of us operate with a strong self interest motivation. will the fanfare of these announcements reveal the equity of distribution or the methodology we each would prefer?

probably not.

but on balance it seems individual windfall yield or not, on balance everyone from the PT college student to us greedy pilots, to management royalty are better off all things considered?

it would seem the question germane to these events is if or not it all would have happened absent the recent legislation?

avalanche

Great post, TonyC. I appreciate your well laid out facts and logic.

busdriver12

I dunno. Supposedly the tax legislation led to rising wages. Which led to higher interest rates, which led to fears of inflation, which led to a plummeting stock market. Or at least that's what the analysts said today. So are we all better off now?