December 20, 2010: Members in some locals make headway on getting UPS to fill vacant 22.3 jobs—while Hoffa and Hall duck the issue.

At the last national grievance panel of 2010, the International Union once again refused to hear a single grievance on the elimination of full-time 22.3 jobs. After looking the other way for two years and telling members, “It wasn’t the right time” to enforce the contract, Package Division Director Ken Hall punted the issue back to the local who filed the grievances in the first place.

Members in several locals where UPS Teamsters have been pushing the issue report that the company has begun filling at least some vacant 22.3 jobs. At the same time, many Teamsters who lost their 22.3 positions continue to work split shifts at part-time rates.

Management has tried to create 22.3 jobs that have an unpaid two-hour break between shifts. This is permitted by the contract if the job is an air combo but not an inside-inside 22.3 position.

Some locals stopped this violation. Others settled for a maximum 90-minute gap. And others caved altogether. When members filed a grievance to stop the 2-hour gap violation in Hartford Local 671, management announced they just wouldn’t fill the vacant 22.3 jobs. Local officials blamed the members, not the company!

Action Needed

UPS’s full-time jobs takeaway is a national problem and it requires a coordinated response by the International.

Under the contract, UPS must maintain a minimum number of 22.3 jobs, but the company gets to decide where to put these jobs. Under this system only the International, not any one local, has the power to monitor UPS and make sure the company is filling all 20,000 full-time positions nationwide.

UPS is required by the contract to provide the union with a list detailing the location of all 22.3 jobs. But IBT officials admit the list is a mess and they have no idea how many 22.3 jobs are filled and how many are vacant.

The problem could easily be addressed if the International Union conducted a national audit of all 22.3 jobs—something that members have been asking for since 2008.

Of course, if Hoffa and Hall were serious about full-time jobs, they wouldn’t have given away the language that requires UPS to create new 22.3 jobs every year.