Pros
Working at the FedEx World Hub is an amazing opportunity to learn a lot about Aircraft Freight, Transportation and Logistics. Being around and in all of the different and very large commercial Aircraft’s (like the Boeing 747, 767, 777 and etc.) is an amazing experience! It is a very fast paced, labour intensive job that requires a lot of hard work and mental stability, especially when you work outdoors in the weather all year around! No matter how extreme that weather is! The job doesn’t get put on hold for anything or anyone one!!!
Cons
A great American Company is intentionally being ran into the ground! No matter how bad and unsafe the equipment is, they refuse to fix it and the performance metrics are not changed whatsoever! This forces management to push employees to drive tugs and other equipment that is not supposed to be used because of maintenance and safety violations! Miss conduct is so out of control that it has literally become the foundation to their overall work culture! Industry standards, safety rules, regulations and laws are a combination of very important and mandatory factors put forth by the Department of Homeland Security, TSA, OSHA and etc. not just for the safety of FedEx employees but also for the safety of the general public. These things help protect Americans from Terrorist Attacks and or from any large scale aircraft crashes, especially while flying over well populated American cities. However, most are ignored and intentionally violated by the majority of all Offload teams, including there managers, each night!! Speaking up once in a while about a serious safety violation is ok, maybe you’ll get somewhere maybe you won’t!? However, if you start speaking up beyond that, then you’re going to have some serious problems with everyone from your team leaders, to your team manager and the SR. Management! For example, load captains (responsible for ensuring the large commercial aircraft is loaded properly, so the weight and balance is not off, bringing down a large commercial aircraft over a large American City) must go through mandatory education, training and testing to become certified to perform that job! All of our electronic equipment used by an aircraft load captain, requires a certified professional to sign in, with there unique ID. This helps ensure a non-certified person isn’t doing this vitally important job and it also creates a bunch of reports, that have to be kept so they can reference them anytime, to know who loaded the plane, and all the other details.. Well Fedex Offload Teams and there managers are constantly allowing untrained, brand new employees to sign in with there credentials and preform those tasks illegally, in most cases with no supervision at all! Unknown to the aircraft pilots, the general public or lawmakers. Required walk arounds for safety and security checks on Aircraft, Aircraft engines and other equipment before the flight can take off, is routinely signed off on by team leaders and or team managers but never actually done! FedEx requires employees to park in certain designated areas that are several blocks away from the facility in distance. Sometimes there is a shuttle bus and sometimes there is not. Rather there is a shuttle’ bus available or not makes no difference because it still takes an insane amount of time. After walking a distance of roughly a quarter mile outside to get to the building, you will then walk up 4 flights of really high, steep stairs to walk across the street in a man made corridor which is roughly another 100 yards across! At this point you will go down another 4 flights of stairs and then stand in a really long line full of several hundred people all scanning there employee badges and then going through a security checkpoint that is identical to the Airport security; scanning your entire body, clothing, purse and etc.. once you finally finish all this, you will then proceed to walk into the actual facility building and head outside to the AirPort. At this point you will have to walk with several hundred other people about another 200-300 yards to actually reach the closest time clock, stand in a really long & time consuming line and eventually get your turn in line to “clock-in” and start your work shift. Even though you have arrived on average over 40-45 minutes ago and put in this insane amount of time, energy and effort to get to the clock, you are not compensated for any of it! And even though you scanned your ID to enter the buildings security check point and the managers all have access to this and use it on a regular basis to let them know if you have actually arrived or if they are unsure about your location at the airport in the middle of the night, they’ll repeatedly check it to see if an employee has left, showing them exactly if/when you did… Real problem is You are judged as “on time” or “late” by your “Clock-In” time on the time clock and depending on the size of the crowd, the length of the lines and of course my personal favourite, any issues at the security checkpoint, which can and do slow you and everyone else down on a regular basis (AKA there can easily be a 20-30 minute wait/time delay from your Employee badge “scan-in” at the security check point to your badge “scan-in” at the time clock) And of course these things are completely out of your control so there is no way to preplan accordingly, other than choosing to show up even earlier (without any pay or credit for your actual arrival time). The same problems persist with your mandatory lunch break of 30min… Some teams get them consistently every night, other teams either don’t get them at all or they get a 10min version of the lunch break but yet regardless rather you get it or not all managers (in a shady attempt to avoid themselves and Fedex as a whole) from getting into trouble will edit your time clock and still deduct your 30min lunch break. Even worse, the law states and so likewise so does Fedex Policy that if you deduct a 30min lunch break from someone, they can legally go and or do whatever they want/like… and the moment you tell them where they have to be or what to do on a lunch break, it’s now legally required for it to become a paid lunch break! Well they hate it when an employee knows this and its a really quick way to cause serious problems with management when you do! (AKA more miss-conduct)