Where's our pay?

I work at FedEx Ground in Mississauga, ON. Our hub manager announced that the company is looking into purchasing the building next to FedEx Ground by August 2010. The plan is to extend the building, incorporate indoor parking, install state of the art body scanners, install swipe card accessibility to our indoor gates and recreate the office space on both sides of the building; sounds like a project that will cost a lot of $$$$$$. In all of this, I can’t help but wonder where the budget for all of this magically appeared from. It wasn’t there last year when the company announced that we didn’t have the budget to provide everyone with a raise, but yet it magically appears when we decided to apply for Teamsters representation. The inquisitive side of me thinks that FedEx is planting its money into renovations and upgrades to avoid a healthy contract negotiation. But the other side of me knows that FedEx is bold enough to flat out lie to their employees about our budget (or lack thereof), to spend our hard earned dollars elsewhere. In the midst of all of this, let’s not forget the fact that FedEx Ground is willing to fight its workers in court, probably spending a ridiculous amount of money on a lawyer to prevent its workers from obtaining representation by Teamsters Canada. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it our right to join a union? Isn’t it our right to expect more from our employer? Do we deserve to be lied to by our company?, all of this to avoid giving the employees a pay increase that is sufficient enough to take care of our families and put us inline with the rest of the Courier industry.

Teamsters Canada Response:

Thank you for your comments!!