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I remember Supreme Court ruled that FedEx must employ all their delivery drivers (they were all contractors before). How are Amazon delivery drivers better?

hef19898 5y ago
I can't talk about the US, in Germany they are mainly sub-contractors. Easy to spot by their Yellow AMZN badges. DHL and company are doing the same thing so.
- deepsun 5y ago
  Whew, I was under impression that Germany has one of the most strictest employee protections.
tssva 5y ago
FedEx does not employee all their delivery drivers. There were a couple of state supreme court laws which classified some contractors as employees under state laws and required back compensation. Fedex stopped using the business model in question in 2011. Currently for FedEx Home Delivery, which is most similar to Amazon Delivery, FedEx sells delivery routes to independent delivery operators which they then pay to deliver packages on those routes. The delivery operators then employee the drivers and not FedEx. In many circumstances the independent operators and delivery drivers are one and the same. The drivers tried to unionize saying they were in reality employees of FedEx. FedEx refused to recognize the union and a claim was filed with National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB sided with the drivers but their decision was overruled by the DC circuit court of appeals in 2017. By that time a new administration was in charge and the decision of the court was not appealed by the NLRB. The court based their decision by the fact that the independent delivery operators can hire/fire drivers and helpers without input from FedEx and that they can resell the routes independently of FedEx. Amazon Delivery operates under a similar model. All those Amazon delivery vans you see are run by independent delivery operators which hire the drivers. Each delivery operator runs at least 5 vans with the norm being between 20 - 40.

hef19898 5y ago

I can't talk about the US, in Germany they are mainly sub-contractors. Easy to spot by their Yellow AMZN badges. DHL and company are doing the same thing so.

deepsun 5y ago
Whew, I was under impression that Germany has one of the most strictest employee protections.

tssva 5y ago

FedEx does not employee all their delivery drivers. There were a couple of state supreme court laws which classified some contractors as employees under state laws and required back compensation. Fedex stopped using the business model in question in 2011. Currently for FedEx Home Delivery, which is most similar to Amazon Delivery, FedEx sells delivery routes to independent delivery operators which they then pay to deliver packages on those routes. The delivery operators then employee the drivers and not FedEx. In many circumstances the independent operators and delivery drivers are one and the same. The drivers tried to unionize saying they were in reality employees of FedEx. FedEx refused to recognize the union and a claim was filed with National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB sided with the drivers but their decision was overruled by the DC circuit court of appeals in 2017. By that time a new administration was in charge and the decision of the court was not appealed by the NLRB. The court based their decision by the fact that the independent delivery operators can hire/fire drivers and helpers without input from FedEx and that they can resell the routes independently of FedEx. Amazon Delivery operates under a similar model. All those Amazon delivery vans you see are run by independent delivery operators which hire the drivers. Each delivery operator runs at least 5 vans with the norm being between 20 - 40.