Beware - FedEx Drivers are forging signatures for delivery confirmation

Regarding the debate as to whether Fedex drivers are Fedex employees or independent contractors, they are NOT Fedex employees.  I work for a state Department of Labor that was tied up for years with the issue.  Amazon has now been using the same strategy, and here is the history.  Note that the EXPRESS drivers remain direct Fedex employees as far as I know, so this only affects the Ground/Home drivers.

Fedex began treating Ground drivers as independent contractors (there was no Fedex Home at the time).  After a time, some sued to be employees and some applied for unemployment (when needed).  A lot of states started saying they were employees, and Fedex started losing quite a bit.

Their next strategy was to tell groups of them to form partnerships (or multi-member LLCs), such that they tried to say the "companies" was not reliant on single routes for revenue.  In the case where one person lost his/her route, the "company" continued to earn revenue.  They still lost here and there because of a concept called "setting aside the entity."  In other words, sole-proprietorships under tax and torte law make the individual and company one and the same, so it's easy to "set the entity aside" and say the person is working for Fedex.  A partnership is kind of like multiple sole-proprietorships stuck together (setting aside "joint ventures").

Fedex then told these people, operating as multi-member LLCs/partnerships to form CORPORATIONS.  As a corporation, it is a completely separate entity from the individual, so anyone working for the corp is technically an employee of the corp, including officers (who in this case would likely be the only shareholders as well).  As employees of the corp, their wages are reported by the corp for income, unemployment, etc. taxes.  One of the catches of that, though, is that in most states, as officers of the corp, they will be unlikely to receive unemployment benefits.

Unlike dealing with a sole-prop or partnership, where the company and person is the same, a corporation is a whole different beast, tax wise and torte wise, which is what gives it the extra protective aspects because of that separation.  It's easier for the IRS, etc., to say "this person(s)," operating as "this company(ies)" is/are your employees because the business can be construed as a person.  A corp, because by nature is "SEPARATE" from the person cannot be considered the same.

Now they win.

Worked for Fedex in various capacities  for 20 years. Retired in 2004. Back when I started in 1984 Fedex standards were very high. Over  the span of years I could see the decline in the type of workers willing to do the work in a professional manner. It was harder and harder to find good people. The biggest problem. Drugs. You could not have a drug conviction on your record. These days they hire almost anyone willing to work or are able to pass the courier test. Even after attending courier school they still failed. Falsifying any document or signature was a termination offense or finding drugs in your system. The best way to handle a courier issue is to call the shipper and have them deal with customer service. Most of the time when you call customer  service you get a non native English speaker. That wasn't the case in my day. 

@wtyamamoto you are correct on the express drivers, a friend of mine worked directly for FedEx as an express driver. His job didn't seem that different from FedEx ground, other than he was working directly for FedEx.

Thank you @wtyamamoto for the detailed explanation. Fedex Express is an entirely different operation from the ground/home operation. The drivers on our route are all extremely young and they absolutely hustle, never have the time to relax and chat for a bit. UPS, Fedex Express and various freight company employees far more relaxed and have time to converse.

@invalid , @sns . That is the argument they’ve been using since the beginning of their problems - that they are an "express delivery company," with "express drivers," and not a "ground delivery company."

Uber, Lyft, et al. use the same argument in their battles (with mixed results). They claim they are a technology company that CONNECTS riders and drivers through their app - not a transportation company, so what the drivers are doing is not in their "usual course of business," (one of the key concepts). What they did, though, is stall around with all the states knowing that when they had enough drivers and users, THEY would turn into their army to pressure states to change their thinking, and it has worked in many states.

Amazon learned from Fedex’s mistakes. From the beginning, they "tricked" (in my view) many employees (and non-employees) to "start their own lucrative business" as delivery services for Amazon. They had them start separate delivery companies, hire drivers (who, by the way are trained by Amazon) to contract SOLELY with Amazon, and one of the conditions of the contract was that they must treat all drivers as employees. That way, if there are any labor issues, including unemployment claims, it’s the delivery company on the hook.

There are efforts by some drivers to make the delivery companies and Amazon JOINT employers, but that’s a tough haul.  Also note that the above applies to the people driving the blue trucks.  Amazon also utilizes "independent contractors" similar to DoorDash, etc., they call Amazon Flex.  They are the ones that drive their own cars and do "last minute deliveries," etc. outside the normally scheduled blue truck drivers.