1 Ralph Brown was 31,000 feet over Minnesota when both jets on his Falcon 20 flamed out.
2 At 18,000 feet, he says, he and his co-pilot 'were looking for an interstate or a cornfield' to land.
3 At 13,000 feet, the engines restarted.
4 But knowing that mechanics would probably ground him for repairs, Mr. Brown skipped his stop in nearby Chicago and set course to get his load -- a few hundred parcels -- to the Memphis package-sorting hub on time.
5 Had he been a little less gung-ho, 'I'd have gotten the thing on the ground and headed for the nearest bar,' Mr. Brown says.
6 But he flies for Federal Express Corp., perhaps the closest thing in corporate America to the Green Berets.
7 Federal's employees work long hours and seem to thrive on the stress of racing the clock.
8 Like Mr. Brown, they sometimes go to surprising lengths to meet that overarching corporate goal: delivering the goods on time.
9 They are a tribute to Federal's management which, since the company's founding 16 years ago, has had its way with its work force -- an unusual feat in the contentious transportation industry.
10 That may soon change.
11 This month, Federal's 2,048 pilots, including some 961 acquired along with Tiger International Inc. in February, will decide whether to elect the powerful Air Line Pilots Association as their bargaining agent.
12 The election, which would bring the first major union to Federal's U.S. operations, has pitted new hires against devoted veterans such as Mr. Brown.
13 It has also rattled Federal's strongly anti-union management, which is already contending with melding far-flung operations and with falling profits.
14 'A union, sooner or later, has to have an adversary, and it has to have a victory,' Frederick W. Smith, Federal's chairman and chief executive, says with disdain. 'In our formula, we don't have any losers except the competition.'
15 What managers really fear is that the pro-union movement could spread beyond the pilots.
16 Under federal transportation law, a government mediator is attempting to reconcile the melding of Tiger's job classifications into Federal's.
17 Depending on the outcome, the merged company may face union elections this fall among airplane mechanics, ramp workers, stock clerks and flight dispatchers.
18 These groups constitute up to 10% of its work force.
19 'Unions would have a profound effect on the whole culture of the company,' says Bernard La Londe, a professor at Ohio State University at Columbus and a Federal consultant.
20 That culture, carefully crafted by Mr. Smith, leaves little, if any, room for unions.
21 Since founding the company, the charismatic Vietnam vet, who is still only 46 years old, has fostered an ethos of combat.
22 Flights are 'missions.' Mr. Smith's managers have, at times, been called 'Ho Chi Minh's Guerrillas.' The Bravo Zulu award, the Navy accolade for a 'job well done,' is bestowed on Federal's workers who surpass the call of duty.
23 Competitors are known as the 'enemy.'
24 To reinforce employees' dedication, Mr. Smith pays well.
25 He also lets workers vent steam through an elaborate grievance procedure and, as a perk, fly free in empty cockpit seats.
26 He gives pep talks in periodic 'family briefings' beamed internationally on 'FXTV,' the company's own television network.
27 And, with many of his 70,000 workers, Mr. Smith's damn-the-torpedoes attitude has caught on.
28 James Cleveland, a courier who earned a Bravo Zulu for figuring out how to get a major customer's 1,100-parcel-a-week load to its doorstep by 8 a.m., considers himself far more than a courier. 'We don't just hand the customer the package.
29 That's just the beginning,' he says. 'In essence, we run the show.'
30 David Sanders, a longtime pilot, bristles at the mere suggestion that a union might tamper with his flight schedule. 'This is America,' he says. 'Nobody has the right to tell me how much I can work.'
31 Such attitudes have given Federal flexibility, not only to rapidly implement new technology but to keep its work force extraordinarily lean.
32 The company deliberately understaffs, stretching employees' schedules to the limit.
33 But though couriers work as many as 60 hours a week during the autumn rush, they leave early during slack times while still being assured of a minimum paycheck.
34 Pilots, as well, routinely fly overtime to ensure that none are furloughed during seasonal lows.
35 The operational freedom has also given Federal a leg up on archrival United Parcel Service Inc., the nation's largest employer of United Brotherhood of Teamsters members.
36 UPS won't discuss its labor practices, but, according to Mr. Cleveland, a former UPS employee, and others, union work rules prohibit UPS drivers from doing more than carrying packages between customers and their vans.
37 Because UPS drivers aren't permitted to load their own vehicles at the depot, say these couriers, packages often get buried in the load and are delivered late.
38 Labor problems are the last thing Mr. Smith needs right now.
39 Although the Tiger acquisition has brought Federal a long way toward becoming the global player it wants to be, it also has brought problems.
40 It more than doubled Federal's long-term debt to $1.9 billion, thrust the company into unknown territory -- heavy cargo -- and suddenly expanded its landing rights to 21 countries from four.
41 Federal, on its own, hadn't been doing very well overseas.
42 It had hemorrhaged in its attempt to get into Asia, where treaty restrictions forced it to fly some planes half-empty on certain routes.
43 On routes to South America, the company had no backup jets to ensure delivery when planes were grounded.
44 In Europe, business suffered as Federal bought several local companies, only to have the managers quit.
45 These and other problems squeezed Federal's profit margins last year to 8%, down from more than 13% annually in the first half of the decade.
46 Earnings have plummeted, too, in each of the past three quarters.
47 In the fiscal first period ended Aug. 31, profit fell 54% to $30.4 million, or 58 cents a share, mostly because of the Tiger merger, Federal says.
48 Federal's stock price, however, has held up well, driven in part by the general run-up of airline stocks, analysts say.
49 Since trading as low as $42.25 a share in May, Federal's shares have rallied as high as $57.87 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
50 They closed Friday at $53.25, down 50 cents on the day.
51 There's a certain irony in the fact that Federal Express faces its first union problems as a result of its Tiger purchase.
52 Tiger itself was founded by a band of gungho airmen who had airlifted supplies 'over the Hump' from India to China during World War II.
53 In the early 1970s, Mr. Smith modeled his fledgling company on Tiger's innovation of hub-and-spoke and containerized-cargo operations.
54 But from early on, Tiger's workers unionized, while Federal's never have.
55 Federal Express officials acknowledge mistakes in their drive overseas but say it will pay off eventually.
56 Analysts expect Federal's earnings to improve again in its fiscal third quarter ending Feb. 28, when the company should begin benefiting from Tiger's extra flights, back-up planes and landing rights.
57 Until then, they expect the cost of integrating the two carriers to continue crimping profits.
58 For now, the union issue is the most nettlesome of Federal's Tiger problems, management believes.
59 Although encouraging dialogue between managers and workers, Mr. Smith doesn't countenance what he considers insubordination.
60 When a large group of pilots once signed petitions opposing work-rule and compensation changes, he called a meeting in a company hangar and dressed them down for challenging his authority.
61 He then made most of the changes, pilots say.
62 That sort of approach, however, hasn't worked since the addition of Tiger.
63 Its 6,500 workers, who had battled Tiger's management for years over givebacks, were union members until the day of the merger, when most of their unions were automatically decertified.
64 Soon after the merger, moreover, Federal's management asked Tiger's pilots to sign an agreement stating that they could be fired any time, without cause or notice.
65 When the pilots refused, the company retracted it.
66 Mr. Smith angered Federal's pilots, too.
67 In his haste to seal the deal with Tiger Chairman Saul Steinberg last August, Mr. Smith ignored a promise that he had made to his own pilots three years ago: that any fliers acquired in future mergers would be 'end-tailed' -- put at the bottom of the pilot seniority list that determines work schedules, pay and career options.
68 The Tiger merger agreement stipulated that the lists be combined on the basis of tenure.
69 Mr. Smith is trying hard to allay the anger.
70 And even some pro-union pilots say his charisma and popularity among the many former military fliers could be tough to beat. 'A lot of people are identifying a vote for representation as a vote against Fred Smith,' says J.X. Gollich, a Tiger-turned-Federal pilot and union activist.
71 Mr. Smith and other top Federal executives have met with Tiger workers in Los Angeles, Ohio, New York, Alaska, Asia and Europe.
72 Recently, they have appeared every few weeks in talk-show type videos, countering pro-union arguments.
73 In one video, Mr. Smith defended his agreement to merge the pilot-seniority lists.
74 He said Mr. Steinberg had insisted that the merger talks move quickly.
75 Regulators, as well, might have quashed the deal if Tiger's pilots hadn't been protected, he said.
76 Furthermore, Mr. Smith added, 'our contract with our pilots says that we will manage our fleet operations with their advice.
77 It doesn't give any particular group the ability to veto change.'
78 Already, the fight has been costly.
79 The seniority-list controversy, along with the job-classification dispute, has been turned over to the mediator.
80 Meanwhile, the company is operating with two separate pilot groups and seniority lists, and that is costing Federal 'a big number,' says James Barksdale, executive vice president and chief operating officer.
81 The issue has also cost Federal management a lot of good will among its old pilots. 'They were willing to mistreat us because we hadn't shown any moxie, any resistance,' says William Queenan, a DC-10 pilot and 14-year Federal veteran.
82 Adds John Poag, a 727 captain and past chairman of the company-sponsored Flight Advisory Board: 'They've made all these magnanimous gestures to the Flying Tiger pilots, and for us, nothing.'
83 Such animosity could prove pivotal in the union vote.
84 A large majority of the 961 former Tiger fliers support the union, according to a union study.
85 But though most of the 1,087 Federal pilots are believed opposed, it is unclear just how much their loyalty to Mr. Smith has been eroded.
86 The fight has turned ugly and, among pilots at least, has shattered the esprit de corps that Mr. Smith worked so hard to build.
87 Anti-union pilots have held ballot-burning parties.
88 Some younger pilots say they have had to endure anti-union harangues by senior pilots while flying across the country.
89 And for now, at least, the competition isn't the only enemy.
90 Barney Barnhardt, a 727 captain and leader of the pro-union forces, said he has received two anonymous death threats and been challenged to a fight with tire irons by a colleague. 'The pilots are either for us or extremely against us,' he says with a sigh.

At 18 , 000 feet , he says , he and his co - pilot " were looking for an interstate or a cornfield " to land .
interstate
would they crash into cars?