Long Hot Summer at Brown
August 11, 2010: “It’s been a long, hot summer at UPS. The loads are so heavy it looks like peak some days.
We still have members laid off, but management keeps cutting routes and piling it on.
Package drivers are out past eight o’clock. It’s not right.”
Todd Hartsell, Local 90 Des Moines, Iowa
“The company and union repeat over and over: ‘Be glad you’re employed’.”
David Dethrow, Local 688, St. Louis
“All is not well and good in UPS world, that’s for sure. At our building, management is cutting jobs and getting rid of customer counter clerks by eliminating full-time inside jobs, making many workers with over 20 years of seniority having to work split shifts.
“They’ve cut routes and are overburdening the drivers with excessive stops.
“They fire over infractions without adhering to progressive discipline.
“And they have never honored the 9.5 language of the last contract, the language that was supposed to allow drivers to opt in or opt out of overtime.”
Michael Carano, Local 348, Akron, Ohio
( categories: Teamster Voice 268 September 2010 | UPS )
This Layoff thing is the future at UPS. UPS Brass has the Hoffa leadership by the balls. Language in the contract states the creation of 20k inside fulltime jobs. However, UPS is on pace to do away with all inside full-time jobs. Why or how in the world can inside employess be put on lay-off when the work is still there? How can 20 plus year drivers bid into a inside fulltime combo jobs (I thought those were permanent) and a few months later be placed on lay-off? A contract is as good as the Union brass is willing to inforce. With Hoffa and Hall and the rest of the sale-outs nation wide on the local levels it is hard to call this a good contract. For the full-time drivers that have become cover drivers, get used to it. However, again language in the contract states that no employee shall go through progression more than once. Let me ask this: If a driver that has worked in the hub gets called up to drive and becomes a fulltime driver, than gets laid off, drives for a couple of weeks gets put back on lay-off and while all this is going on his/her pay per hour looks worst than the stock market up down up down down up and down why is this not multipe progression? just a few thoughts I wanted to say