FedEx to hire 20000 temps for holiday season

FedEx, a leading US package delivery company, said Monday it would hire 20,000 temporary workers to help handle surging shipments during the year-end holiday season. FedEx Corp. predicted its biggest day of the year would be December 10, when they expect to handle a record 19 million shipments, up 10 percent from a year ago, driven by online orders. For the overall holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, FedEx forecasted it would handle more than 280 million shipments worldwide, 13 percent more than in the same period in 2011. The company, based in Memphis, Tennessee, has a global workforce of more than 300,000 employees. On October 10 Fedex announced it was planning to cut "several thousand" people from its workforce via a voluntary departure program beginning early next year. The cuts are part of a cost-reduction plan aimed at boosting profits by $1.7 billion by 2016.