news/AMZN/2023.02.01/FedEx to cut senior jobs as part of larger staff reduction.txt

LOS ANGELES, Feb 1 (Reuters) - FedEx Corp on
Wednesday said it would cut its officer and director ranks by
more than 10% as part of a broad cost-reduction effort that has
reduced staffing at the delivery giant by 12,000 workers since
June, a spokeswoman said.Shares in FedEx rose 3.4% to $200.52 as investors applauded
the move, which signals progress on the company's plan to slash
expenses by $3.7 billion this year.FedEx informed employees about the senior-level layoffs in a
memo, which did not say how many positions would be affected.
The company's overall workforce reductions account for a little
over 2% of FedEx's 547,000 full-time and part-time workers
reported for the year ended May 2022."Unfortunately, this was a necessary action to become a more
efficient, agile organization," wrote Chief Executive Raj
Subramaniam, who added that FedEx is consolidating some teams
and functions.Most of the cuts came through attrition and other headcount
management efforts, spokeswoman Rachael Simmons said.In mid-September, FedEx pulled its profit forecast and
shares swooned more than 20% - the largest single-day drop in
the company's 50-year history.Subramaniam, the company's newly minted CEO, blamed a global
business downturn while critics pointed to a flat-footed
response to slowing demand and ongoing profit pressure from
FedEx's expensive, separately run business units.Gary Bradshaw, a portfolio manager with Hodges Capital
Management in Dallas, recently told Reuters that job cuts would
be welcome, particularly after FedEx lowered its annual profit
forecast."They've got lots of right-sizing to do," Bradshaw said.For decades, FedEx was favored by investors over its
unionized competitor United Parcel Service because it
relied on less costly nonunion and outsourced labor. But in
recent years UPS CEO Carol Tomé has delivered bigger profits and
better service from that company's single network.With its move on jobs, FedEx will have reduced the number of
its full- and part-time employees to around 535,000 - roughly on
par with UPS, based on workforce counts in the most recent
annual reports for each company.But those numbers only tell part of the story because they
exclude roughly  6,000 FedEx contractors and their workers, who
handle most of the FedEx Ground's home delivery business.Most Ground contractors employ about nine to 12 employees
each, said consultant Satish Jindel, who helped found the
company that was rebranded as FedEx Ground. Using an average of
10.5 workers per contractor would add a total of 69,000 jobs at
Ground.FedEx already has temporarily furloughed workers at its
trucking division FedEx Freight as the pandemic-fueled
e-commerce delivery bubble deflates and a recession threatens,
joining transportation-focused companies ranging from delivery
upstart Amazon.com and trucking company C.H. Robinson
Worldwide to transportation broker Uber Freight and
freight forwarding startup Flexport in announcing layoffs.
(Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; editing by Diane
Craft, Aurora Ellis and Jonathan Oatis)