Monday, November 28, 2005

BusinessWeek: The Ground War At FedEx

Drivers are Suing to Protest Their Status as Contractors— and Gaining Traction

Back in 1996, when Roy Mason landed work as a delivery driver with Roadway Package System Inc., he liked the idea of being an independent contractor, instead of an employee. Although he drove exclusively for RPS out of its Arcadia (Calif.) terminal, Mason felt the company gave him wide latitude to manage his routes.
Two years later, FedEx Corp. acquired RPS, and Mason says that's when things changed. He says a new management team set out strict rules dictating everything from how he dresses to how he holds his truck keys as he approaches a customer's door. And the company imposes fines on drivers who don't meet its strict standards. A few weeks ago, Mason says, managers shadowed him on his route, then slapped him with a citation for leaving his truck door open as he sprinted to drop off a package on a customer's front porch. "They are absolutely controlling everything I do," says Mason, 49. Full story here.......http://www.teamster.org/05news/hn_051123_4.htm

Zollars sells $5.6M in Yellow stock

Yellow Roadway Corp.CEO Bill Zollars last week sold 117,860 shares of company stock for more than $5.6 million, a federal filing shows.

Zollars exercised options to acquire the shares on Nov. 22 at a price of $17.21 a share, or a total of more than $2 million, the Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed. He then sold the stock throughout the day at a price of about $48 a share, according to the filing, which was filed late Friday.
The transactions left Zollars with a profit of more than $3.6 million.
In a Nov. 21 news release, Yellow Roadway Corp. announced that Zollars had adopted a plan to sell the stock in accordance with an SEC trading plan.
"Zollars' plan is a component of his overall tax and financial planning strategy that is designed to provide enhanced diversification and liquidity," the news release said.
Zollars retains 154,465 stock options, according to the news release, meaning he exercised about 43 percent of his available stock options with last week's transactions. He also continues to own 134,234 shares of Yellow Roadway stock, the federal filing indicated.