Aggressive Contract Proposals Needed for UPS Contract

October 18, 2006. We all have high hopes for improvements in our UPS contract, but an over-arching goal has to be to strengthen our union and secure our future. With that in mind, concerned UPS members and leaders are looking at what it will take in our contract to undo problems in the current contract, and protect our future on the job and in retirement.

Secure our Pension & Health Benefits

• Provide sufficient funding to strengthen our funds and undo the pension cuts of the past two years.

• End the benefit cuts and restore 25- and 30-and-out to Central States Teamsters.

• Bring all Teamsters into the union health and pension funds. (End the practice in the Central States Fund of keeping part-timers, the youngest and healthiest participants, in separate employer funds.)

Health and Welfare

• Maintenance of benefits (as already in place in the West).

• Protect our future with unionization of UPS.

• Provide a fair “card-check” and neutrality agreement for UPS Freight and all nonunion subsidiaries, to bring tens of thousands of UPSers into our union and our pension plans.

Wages and Pay Progression

• Raise part-time starting rates to a minimum of $12.50 per hour.

• Reduce progressions and the number of pay tiers by bringing all employees up to union scale within six months.

End Excessive Overtime

• Double time for all hours worked over ten per day.

• Minimum of five eight-hour days per month, if requested.

• Automatic penalty of double time for all hours worked if eight-hour request denied.

• Eliminate “complete assignment” from overtime relief language.

• Management must provide adequate cover help to accommodate overtime release requests (other drivers will not be forced to pay the price for overtime accommodation).

• Mechanism in place to require hiring more drivers in centers with excessive overtime.

End Subcontracting our Jobs

• Automatic penalties of triple pay for subcontracting.

• Forbid non-bargaining unit employees from delivering packages to UPS facilities within the same shipping zone.

Improve and Increase 22.3 Jobs

• Upgrade pay of combo positions to reach package-car rate during the life of the new agreement.

• Part-timers not forced from their preferred job as a result of full-time job creation.

• Back pay and penalties if full-time jobs are not bid and filled by July 31 of each year.

• Create 3,000 new 22.3 jobs per year, with no years skipped as was done in the current contract.

Protect Against Unfair Production Standards

• Management must not post or publicly distribute production related information about individuals or groups.

Restrictions on Supervisors Working

• Limit supervisors doing bargaining work for training purposes to a maximum of one hour.

• Triple-time penalties paid to grievant or highest seniority employee if no grievant named, minimum of one hour pay for each incident of supervisor working.

Grievance Procedure

• Right to strike over deadlocked grievances. Bring the “hammer” in the freight contract to the UPS contract.