Yes, FedEx and other companies that are furloughing see a grand opportunity to bring their employees much ill will with no regard to the bottom line or how it will affect the company. The evil management just wants to watch you suffer.
In the real world (please feel free to join us anytime), the company has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. If lowering labor is the way that it thinks it must achieve the desired profit, that is their responsibility. They DO NOT have a responsibility to you to keep you employed. I agree, if they alienate all labor to the point that they cannot fill their pilot seats, they will do themselves a disservice. I also have noted that right now, people would climb over each other to have a chance to work at FedEx. Supply and demand and market forces affect the free world.
FedEx can furlough all but 2 of its pilots even if it makes 400 billion dollars this year. Will it probably fail? I would think so. My point is that somebody is being paid to run the company, and they seem to think that they are overmanned. They are taking actions to fix the problem BEFORE it affects the profit margin. Sorry, FedEx is not in business to employ anybody. They are in business to MAKE A PROFIT. In fact, to make as much profit as they possibly can. Somehow before when they were one of the most stable and better paying flying jobs in the country, nobody faulted them for that. When they cannot afford to continue to pay so many pilots so much money, you want them to just keep everybody on board and ignore reality.
Like I said before, you claim management is inept and runs the airline businesses into the ground, but as soon as one is proactive, you claim it is greedy and self-serving. Must be nice to have it both ways.