By Paul Ziobro
GREENWOOD, Miss. -- Inside the nearly barren living room of her
apartment, Mary Harris slips into a reflective yellow jacket
adorned with the FedEx Corp. logo as the sun begins to set.
It is Monday. She won't be back home until around sunrise on
Wednesday.
In between, Ms. Harris will drive an hour northwest to
Cleveland, Miss., from where she will make three four-hour round
trips curled up on a bus to Memphis, Tenn. In Memphis, she will do
two overnight shifts and one day shift -- each five hours long --
helping to move and sort millions of packages at FedEx's primary
air hub.
FedEx has tapped deep into the Mississippi Delta to find workers
for the largest facility in its world-wide supply chain. Lured by
the chance to work for a global company and earn hourly wages
starting at $13.26, some 200 workers gather in a Walmart parking
lot in Cleveland, Miss., five nights a week to board buses bound
for Memphis.
"They're important to the daily operation," said Barb Wallander,
a senior vice president of human resources at FedEx. "We depend on
them."
The connection with Cleveland, a two-hour drive from Memphis, is
an unlikely cog in a machine that gets the surge of holiday
shipments to homes quickly. FedEx and its rivals are expected to
carry more than 2.4 billion global packages between Thanksgiving
and the end of the year, or twice as many parcels as they handled
in 2013, according to SJ Consulting Group estimates.
The busing program, which runs year-round and is nearing its
first anniversary, highlights the lengths delivery giants have to
go to staff their operations at a time when unemployment is low,
especially around the largest hubs. In Memphis, the unemployment
rate is 3.8%, just above the 50-year low of 3.5% nationwide. In
Louisville, Ky., where United Parcel Service Inc. runs its main air
hub, the unemployment rate is 3.2%.
Ms. Harris said opportunities like the one at FedEx are no
longer available in Greenwood, a shrinking rural town that welcomes
visitors with a sign that reads "Cotton Capital of the World."
"It is in my blood to work hard for what I need and want," said
the 39-year-old, who started working for FedEx last December. She
drives an hour to get to Cleveland to start her bus commute.
In Bolivar County, where Cleveland is, the unemployment rate
stands at 6.8%, according to the Mississippi Department of
Employment Security. A drug manufacturer recently closed a factory
there, and an auto-parts maker expects to close a plant soon.
The situation drew FedEx to host a job fair in Cleveland in
November 2018, just ahead of the busiest period for the shipping
industry. The city has a population of 12,000.
Ms. Wallander said FedEx expected not much more than a few dozen
attendees. Instead, about 500 people showed up, said Pam Chatman, a
retired news director who posted word of the event on her Facebook
page. FedEx later staged a hiring center in a church fellowship
center, where it did drug screening and orientation.
A major hurdle was how workers would get to Memphis, 115 miles
away. Many didn't have cars.
FedEx committed to providing free bus rides for the workers,
part of a three-year pilot program. "If the jobs are not coming to
the Mississippi Delta, then we have to take the people to the
jobs," said Ms. Chatman, who reached out to FedEx volunteering to
coordinate the initial job fair.
Workers collect around 7 p.m. in the Walmart parking lot on
North Davis Avenue, one of two retail corridors that cross through
Cleveland. They are easy to spot in their FedEx-issued jackets
entering the big-box retailer or adjacent Murphy's gas station to
grab chicken, McDonald's or other snacks before three Delta Bus
Lines coaches pull up.
Kinyuna Cannon, 25 years old, has been working for FedEx for the
past four months. The starting wage was well above the $7.85 an
hour she earned at her last job at a nursing home. "It is the
transportation and the pay," she said of the appeal of the FedEx
job, which are part-time positions that provide health and
retirement benefits.
She boards the middle bus, settling into the black leather seats
for the ride to Memphis. The caravan of headlights cuts through the
rural highway on a moonless night.
Two hours later, the buses pull into an employee parking lot
across from the Memphis International Airport. The workers
disembark, cross a covered overpass and traverse the security
checkpoint. They blend in among the 7,000 workers that night,
helping to unload 150 cargo planes, sort their packages and reload
them to the next destination.
Walter Kirkeminde, FedEx senior manager of operations, says
turnover among the workers coming from Mississippi is lower than
the locals, who have more opportunity to switch jobs if the
overnight schedule proves unmanageable. He was skeptical of the
staying power and initially thought the bus would last a few weeks.
"That would be my limit," he said.
FedEx has since started busing workers for shifts to a sorting
facility for its Ground division in Olive Branch, Miss. It has
attempted to add buses to other regions with similar demographics
to Cleveland. "We haven't had the same response rate," Ms.
Wallander said.
The Mississippi Delta has ties to the leaders of both FedEx and
UPS. FedEx founder Fred Smith was born in nearby Marks, Miss., the
son of a bus- company owner, before starting his overnight delivery
company in Memphis. UPS CEO David Abney was born in Cleveland and
started working at UPS in the city to pay his way through the local
college.
Ms. Harris, who grew up in the Delta, recalls past jobs she had
in the area, including in fish-processing plants and driving
trucks, and how she spent months moving among friends' houses and
for a time in a shelter before she went to the FedEx job fair.
Now, her 21-year-old son, Denzell, also works at FedEx, and she
is picking up extra shifts. After the first night, she quickly
turns around on the bus to work the day shift in Memphis. Once that
is done, she returns back to Cleveland. With not enough time to
head home, she makes a brief stop at her son's father's house to
freshen up.
She has hopes of progressing at FedEx, perhaps working on the
aircraft she helps load. "I thought FedEx was a godsend," she said.
"It helped so many people get out of their rut."
Write to Paul Ziobro at Paul.Ziobro@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 07, 2019 05:44 ET (10:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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