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...
New Workshops at the TDU Convention
Check out these new workshops for the TDU Convention, Nov. 5-7 in Chicago. Getting Results without Grievances Is management getting its way while you get bogged down in the grievance procedure? How to avoid getting stuck and resolve workplace problems through organizing and action. Dealing with Different Kinds of Supervisors The boss who won’t make a decision. The fake friend. The bully. How to protect members and enforce the contract by tailoring your grievance tactics...
The Hoffa-Hall Record at UPS
August 11, 2010: Do you want them negotiating another UPS contract? Can we afford more of the same? The Full-Time 22.3 Jobs Takeaway UPS's Record Profits and Our 35¢ Raise The UPS Pension Divide No Protection from New Technology and Production Harassment Passing the Buck on 9.5 Violations
The Full-Time 22.3 Jobs Takeaway
August 11, 2010: Hoffa and Hall surrender one of the biggest gains of the 1997 strike. Teamster members united to win labor’s biggest victory in decades in the 1997 UPS Strike. But Hoffa and Hall have surrendered one of the biggest gains of that strike: full-time combo jobs. Uniting under the slogan Part-Time America Won’t Work, members demanded that the company create good-paying full-time jobs by combining low-wage part-time jobs. We won and UPS was...
UPS’s Record Profits and Our 35¢ Raise
August 11, 2010: When Hoffa and Hall inked the current contract with UPS, the company was making record profits of more than $6 billion a year. The reward for working Teamsters was a 35¢ raise. To add insult to injury the contract also included no COLA in 2008. That year, UPS Teamsters were entitled to a 15¢ COLA because of skyrocketing food and fuel costs. We got nothing. In all, the 2008 contract had more...
The UPS Pension Divide
August 11, 2010: Hoffa and Hall’s decision to let UPS pull out of Central States saved the company billions. It also locked tens of thousands of Teamsters into a substandard pension. The Hoffa-Hall UPS Pension Plan pays the lowest pension benefits to UPS Teamsters in the country. The plan covers 44,000 UPS Teamsters in the Carolinas and Central and Southern regions—the single largest group of UPS Teamsters covered by any plan. The pensions of these...
No Protection from New Technology and Production Harassment
August 11, 2010: Drivers are paying the cost for another Hoffa-Hall surrender in bargaining—this time over the language on technology and discipline. Telematics is like an OJS every day. Hoffa and Hall watered down contract language to protect drivers from new technology.Brown’s new telematics system increases surveillance and pushes drivers even harder on production. The technology enables management to track drivers at all times by combining data from the DIAD and more than 200 sensors...
Passing the Buck on 9.5 Violations
August 11, 2010: Are long days, production harassment and 9.5 violations a problem? Not to Hoffa and Ken Hall. Hall told stewards on a national conference call in July that, “The 9.5 language isn’t perfect, but it is getting better.” It’s a strange claim to make—since Hoffa and Hall have spent the last two years watering down that very language. Before the current contract, any package car driver could file a grievance if they worked...
New England Pension Fund
August 20, 2010: The New England is our union’s third largest fund. Where it stands and what it will take to protect our pensions and rebuild union power. A new Actuarial Valuation Report from the New England Teamsters pension fund shows that the fund is seriously underfunded. But it can recover with a long-term plan to build Teamster power. The March 2010 report was obtained by members under the disclosure provision of the Pension Protection...
On Strike for Equality
August 11, 2010: They work side-by-side with Teamster movers who make a living wage and get decent benefits. But some workers at ATM Enterprises are making $8 an hour with no healthcare. On July 19, more than 40 workers at ATM Enterprises and a related company, Trucking Office Products System, dropped their dollies and picked up picket signs—to transform these poverty-wage jobs into decent jobs with a living wage. ATM workers voted to join Teamsters...