July 17, 2009: The decisions are in from the June meeting of the National Grievance Committee in Philadelphia and the results aren’t pretty. If the National Grievance Committee was a UPS employee it would be fired for poor job performance.
In four days of hearings, the highest UPS grievance body under the contract ruled in favor of the union just four times. The company won 13 cases outright. Another 42 cases were deadlocked. An incredible 78 cases were postponed.
Only two of the union wins required the company to pay the grievant and one of these cases involved just 4 hours of overtime.
In the other two cases, the company was instructed to comply with the contract and a monetary reward was either assigned to another grievance body to decide or denied outright. What a system!
Thirty-give cases were settled or withdrawn with no details given.
Panel Fails To Enforce Contract, Protect Full-Time Jobs
The National Grievance Committee meeting in Philadelphia, June 8 to 11 was the International Union’s opportunity to make UPS create all 20,000 full-time combo jobs that are required by Article 22.3 of the contract.
Hoffa and Hall continued to let management have its way with eliminating the full-time jobs we won in the 1997 strike.
The only Article 22.3 case settled at the panel went in management’s favor. That case (N-11-09) involved the Texas Full-Time Job Massacre where, in one blow, UPS eliminated more than 100 combo jobs at the Dallas Ft. Worth airport and reduced full-time Teamsters to part-time pay and assigned them to work split shifts.
Local 767 officials report that the massacre will stand. The union will not require UPS to fill the more than 100 combo jobs eliminated at DFW Airport even though the company is thousands of jobs short of maintaining the 20,000 combo jobs required by the contract.
Of the dozen other grievances on combo job elimination slated to be heard at the panel, one was withdrawn and twelve were postponed.
The UPS National Grievance Committee will meet just one more time this year: Oct. 12-15 at the Hilton San Diego Resort and Spa.
Click here to download the decisions from the June national grievance panel.