By John Hatcher, Sr. AMT, Atlanta, and Kevin Dickerson, Sr. AMT, Memphis

We took some time off from work a few weeks ago to go to the Teamsters headquarters in Washington, D.C to help out with the FedEx campaign Teamsters Canada launched this year. Why? Because we strongly believe that organizing at FedEx in the United States and in Canada will greatly benefit all FedEx workers and we wanted to help out. We all need to be working under a Teamster contract.

At Teamster headquarters, we were videotaped talking about our campaign, the different labor laws in the U.S. and Canada and how our campaign is different, the importance of the Express Carrier legislation, the freezing of our pension, and why we all need a union contract to work under.

We both came away with a stronger sense of the importance of our mission. We’re both sick and tired of seeing our benefits taken away one by one, our skyrocketing healthcare costs, our shoddy treatment by our managers and FedEx executives.

This is our message to any FedEx Express worker who is still on the fence about why we need to form a union with the Teamsters:

“Don’t wait until you’re on the other side of the fence to see that you need the help of a union. It will be too late for you.” – Kevin Dickerson.

“If you simply do the math, you’ll see what you’re losing. Just do the math.” – John Hatcher.